under the same sun
by ya'aburnee
Summary: [013]. He wasn't sure if she was the one lighting the match or pouring the gasoline. - Obito/Rin
1. silence

**under the same sun**

**[silence]  
****summary: **Why didn't she ever look at him like that?  
**characters: **Obito, Rin, Kakashi, and Minato  
**rating: **T  
**note1: **can't believe i'm starting a new story.  
**note2: **who else was had a "surprise motherfucker" moment when Tobi/Madara/Nobody turned out to be Obito?

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_her smile_

_her laugh_

_her hair_

_her eyes_

Damn.

Sweat dripped down his brow, sliding against the rim of his goggles. Exertion and exhaustion soon set in as he pressed forward again, trying to aim higher now; the target was right there in plain sight (something he knew a shinobi would never be) and all he had to do was hit it. A simple, expert flick of his wrist would send the instrument cutting sharply through the air and lodge against the target.

It was so easy.

Kakashi did it– three hundred times in exactly one minute – and Obito will not to lose to him this time; he's determined to win.

But damn.

_She _was there, patching up Minato's fingers, worn out from writing up mission reports that he fell behind on.

Sucking in a shuddering breath, he aimed once more. Eyes narrowed, jaw clenched, fingers flexing against the hardened handle of the knife, Obito spared a glance once more over to the left where _sensei_ was, smiling softly down at _her_, as she rambled on. The kunai slipped, falling from his grasp before he could even throw it.

Kakashi's snort was the first thing he heard after the dull thud of metal hitting hard ground resounded in his ears. The second was _her _gentle gasp as she watched the embarrassing display of him losing to _Kakashi-kun_ once more.

Silence.

He didn't hear Minato-sensei try to coach him on what to do next, words sounding exasperated from the amount of times he had to explain and repeat the directions in that short day. He didn't hear Kakashi's snide comment on ninja's and who was and wasn't qualified to be one.

He did, however, hear _her _soft words, encouraging him to try once more and - just _do what Kakashi-_kun_ did_.

Swallowing down the bitter taste in his mouth, his empty hand clenched tightly, falling to his side. With a passing glance at the fallen kunai lying unassuming in the stems of grass, he shook his head and glanced at _her_, trying to will the humiliated tears away.

The look in _her_ eyes, the full admiration shining through paralyzed him for a moment. Then those brown eyes connected with his and reality fell heavily on his shoulders, weighing him down with an overbearing sense of realization.

_She_ wasn't looking at him with doe-like eyes; _her _gaze – as always – was locked on Kakashi's lean form.

Before anything else could be said, he ran from the clearing of the training ground, ignoring the surprised shouts that followed him.

Why didn't _she_ ever look at him like that?

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**note3: **this is a drabble series, which started out as a one shot but sprouted wings and flew away.

**note4: **i'm an addict and reviews are my drugs. feed the junkie, please?


	2. equals

**under the same sun**

**[equals]  
****summary: **They were equals now. He stood beside her instead of behind. He sat next to her instead of across. He spoke to her instead of around her. Little things that she probably didn't even notice but made him swell with pride.  
**characters: **Obito, Rin  
**honorable mentions: **Kakashi, Minato, slight Kushina  
**rating**: K  
**note1: **thank you everyone who reviewed and added this to their favorites!  
**note2: **this was supposed to be out sooner, but – damn you, procrastination!

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He could refer to her by name now, instead of so ambiguously like he had in his head.

_Rin._

_Rin._

_Rin. Rin. Rin_

_Rin. Rin. Rin. Rin. RinRinRinRinRinRin._

His heart still felt like it had imploded inside his chest each time he thought of it, and his palms were so slick with sweat that he had to wipe them across his pant leg several times to be rid of the wetness, and his stomach still erupted in a nervous ache, but it was _progress_. Before, whenever he thought of her name, his face would burn fiercely and his knees would quake violently, threatening to give out under the crushing weight that simple, three lettered name, gave.

Nothing changed outwardly; he was still the same person as he'd always been, but for some reason _she _was different. Instead of being an idolized object of his inner desire, she was simply Rin: beautiful, amazing, compassionate _Rin_. They were equals now. He stood beside her instead of behind. He sat next to her instead of across. He spoke to her instead of around her.

Little changes, that's all they were. She probably didn't even notice them, but they made him swell with pride.

Was it him who made them equal? Did he somehow manage to push Kakashi out of her view and insert himself stubbornly in place, refusing to budge no matter how hard she pushed against him? Or was it her, who suddenly decided that there was more to life than the silver haired boy who held her heart in his hands, only to shove it aside like a piece of crumbled paper that he had no use for?

She didn't like him.

Rin did not have a crush on Obito.

Period.

For some reason, that didn't matter to him anymore.

He still liked her (practically lived for her); that didn't change. But he managed to somehow acquire her friendship through the past month, although the _how_ aspect of it all was still lost on him. Obito wasn't going to mess any chance up that he might have with Rin; even if that meant watching her make _eyes_ at Kakashi the entire time they were all together.

Sometimes, when Minato-sensei was busy with his own devices (namely Kushina), and Kakashi was off (Obito liked to think he was skulking around his apartment, seething with jealously over how _advanced_ Obito had become in training – he was _almost_ at par to the rest of them and gloated about it constantly, incase any of them forgot – but in reality, he was just training alone, like he preferred), leaving Rin and himself alone.

In those (many) instances, they would watch a movie or get something to eat together.

Obito tried to pretend that it was a _date _a couple times, but the subject of Kakashi would stub out those feelings instantly. Rin was always the one to bring him up, making little conversational comments on a new trick he mastered, or how he was going to excel in the upcoming Chunin exams. They used to make him sulk stubbornly, pouting the entire time until Rin caught on to his mood and dropped the topic.

Now, he could add to the conversation, throwing in his own opinion.

He was also glad to hear that each of her comments on Kakashi was always mission-related, sounding like a proud teammate instead of a lover. She still had a crush on him, though; Obito could see it clearly just as he had before. That didn't change. But the subtleness of her affections, muted and not as obvious as it was before, gave him hope that maybe – just maybe – she was getting over Kakashi.

An unrequited childish crush was bound to burn out over time.

He could let it run its course. Let Rin see for herself that she didn't love Kakashi.

Or he could stand there, unassuming, in the background with a pitcher of water in his hand, sprinkling it over the flame.

(He, quite obviously, chose the latter.)

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**note2: **next update will be on Wednesday. maybe Tuesday.  
**note3: **reviews are my drug. be a good dealer would you?


	3. sick

**under the same sun**

**[sick]  
****summary: **Rin was only ever sick twice, and neither time was any easier on Obito.  
**characters: **Obito, Rin, Minato, OC's, Kakashi  
**rating: **T (ehh, maybe K)  
**note1: **i promised fluff. so, here is my _attempt_ at no angst, no one-sided love, and no hopelessly pinning Obito.(okay, well, technically, Obito will _always _hopelessly pinning over Rin, but at least we get to see some ObiRin friendship. whichbasicallymeansRinistoto allyfallingforObito-maybeprobablywhoknows)!  
**note2: **this was supposed going to be up – like,_ yesterday_, but i had to work later than expected. so, here it is! _  
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Rin was only ever sick twice.

The first time, she had unintentionally caught Obito's cold when she leaned over to say something and he accidentally coughed on her. Being advanced in her medical field, she was able to trace it down to that instant (and because Obito was the only person who would _cough_ on someone; Kakashi wore a mask, and she was never in that close of contact with Minato).

He followed her around the entire day when she first confessed to needing a small break due to a minor cold. Apologies flying from his lips in broken sentences, stuttering out words of promised retribution and begging for forgiveness.

She lost her patience with his persistence more than once, but at least he helped with the groceries she was carrying.

And the laundry she was behind on.

And most of the cleaning around her apartment that needed to be done, too.

She utilized his guilt by having him run errands for her throughout the day, while she lounged in bed, recuperating for tomorrow. He didn't seem to mind the small tasks she had him do (asking for more, actually) and Rin only feels a bit guilty when he comes back, tired and worn, still apologizing for something that was bound to happen sooner or later.

That night, she makes dinner (a soup recipe she stole from the library) for them both, and sends him off – with a lot of reluctance on his part - giving him a token of gratification in the form of a hug. He's blushing brightly when she lets go, but doesn't offer much of a fight when she slams the door in his face as yet another apology is beginning to form on his lips.

The second time she was sick, it wasn't his fault.

Going to a different country, shinobi's were aware that the change in environment would undoubtedly cause an illness that needed immediate treatment. They all got shots for different diseases and sicknesses before they graduated from the academy. The shots were routinely updated every five months to make sure that nothing they caught would be brought back to their own village and leaked out to the civilians, who didn't have the ninja's immune system.

During a mission, Rin ate something that had bacteria inside of it, making her get food poisoning. Obito didn't know what the words _parasite_ and _salmonella _and _infection_, but from the look on Minato's face as the head-nurse explained it all, he was sure it wasn't anything good.

Peaking around his sensei's broad form, he glanced in the room they brought her to when she suddenly began getting violently ill. Nobody, aside from doctors – all wearing pressed, crisp white coats with matching expressions of detachment and indifference and pale green masks covering their mouths and noses – were allowed inside the room. The only exception being Minato and some nurses, holding bags of medical supplies and vials of clear liquid into the room; their expressions were more telling than the doctors. They all carried unmasked worry in their eyes.

When he sees her, Obito wishes that he could rush in the room and take her hand, comfort her somehow. IVs attached all over her body; she looked…terrible. Pale, with cheeks that were too red, blending into the tattoos on her face; hair tangled and limp, splayed across the sterile pillow; and hands clenching and releasing around the white blanket below her.

He heard the doctor ask his sensei what she might have eaten before this happened, prompting him for specifics. Minato struggled for a moment, running through his head what Rin ordered off the menu at the restaurant they went to. Kakashi didn't know either.

Obito did.

They sat beside each other at the table, her chastising him for giggling at the poor English translated on the sleek brown menu pages. He was the one who recommended the foreign food to her.

"_Try the vegetable and chicken casserole._"

"She had vegetables and chicken," he spoke urgently, glancing worriedly from the doctor to the pale girl lying on the bed. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Another doctor looked at him for a minute, his eyes cutting through him sharply. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I…I told her to get it…"

The two doctors turned to each other, murmuring quietly once more in hushed voices.

"Okay. Administer antibiotics, then?" The one who spoke to Obito said, while the other nodded.

He turned away and walked back into the room, shutting the door behind him.

"What's going on?" Minato asked. "What's wrong with Rin?"

Turning his sharp gaze to their group, the doctor spoke clearly and quietly, hand relaxing on the clipboard he was holding. The name on the front read _Rin _in simple block text. "She has food poisoning. Salmonella - it's a bacteria found in unwashed fruits and vegetables and uncooked meats."

"How did she get it though? We all ate there!" Obito furrowed his brow, glaring at the closed-door behind the doctor.

"The person who prepared her food must not have washed and cooked it thoroughly. We need to send a health inspector to the establishment immediately." Something must have shown on Obito's face, as he instantly began reassuring them. "Don't worry. She'll be fine. We'll keep her overnight, giving her antibiotics and keeping her hydrated. She'll be able to go home tomorrow morning."

Minato quickly intervened, nodding graciously. "Thank-you."

The doctor nodded once, evenly, and then began walking down the hall.

It took Minato several times to coax Obito into moving from his perch beside Rin's door, even then it was through bribery and the threat of security being called on him. He didn't move until the nurse told him that he wouldn't be allowed back if he didn't go now.

His grandmother always told him that the best way to make someone who's sick feel better is to make homemade soup and tuck them in with a warm afghan. In the small hotel they're staying at, nothing stood out that would take care of the 'warm quilt' part of her suggestion. Thin covers with tacky patterns (he thinks they're meant to ward people off from stealing them) and even thinner sheets are all the small hotel offers. The hospital blankets didn't seem that comfortable to him.

Rin wouldn't be comfortable sleeping on that.

He couldn't sleep anyway – tossing and turning, thinking about Rin dying or Rin waking up to nothing but an impersonal room and no comfort – and tugged on his boots.

It was three in the morning, and he stood at the exit of the hotel, clutching a small bag of money, looking for any venues that were open.

* * *

When Rin wakes up the next morning, she's wrapped in a pink and red dotted quilt that wasn't there before and a sleeping Obito curled in the chair beside her bed (who wasn't there before either). On the little table beside her bed, there was a small Styrofoam container with her name hastily scribbled in Obito's writing.

Reaching over, she pulled the warm container on her lap and peeled the lid back.

The same soup she made all those years ago was inside the container. She could see improperly sliced chunks of celery and carrots that immediately let her know Obito was the one who hastily made it.

("_Mmm! Rin-chan! What's in this?" She tried not feel repulsed by the chewed bits of soup she could see each time he opened his mouth. _

"_Ah, carrots, celery, shiitake mushrooms, beets, udon noodles, chicken, and broth."_

"_It's so good, Rin-chan!")_

Rin smiled softly at the sight, glancing at him and reaching over to gently pushing back onyx locks that fell in front of his face.

"Thank you, Obito-kun," she says to herself, placing the soup aside and brings the quilt around his shoulders before lying back down on the bed.

One eye peeked open when Rin's breathing evened out, and Obito smiled. "You're welcome, Rin-chan."

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**omake:**

It took Obito three hours to hunt down all the ingredients for the soup – which he was going on by memory – and all the money he had in his pockets to buy the quilt at four in the morning.

It was worth it though; Rin thanked him _and _called him _Obito-kun_.

(Not to mention the look on Kakashi's and Minato's faces when they came to check on Rin that morning and found him lying beside her bed huddled under the same quilt.)

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**note3: **okay, so i lied. there was some angst (not a lot but...eh) – why? because without it, i tend to make a mockery of the romance genre with my feeble attempts to piece together something that doesn't make people cringe and say, '_parmesan, swiss, cheddar, feta, and cottage…gees, that's a lot of _cheese.'  
**note4: **the next chapter – which will be pseudo-angst/lots of lovely-blah-blah-blah, and Rin will her time in the spotlight! – will be posted on Saturday, mmmkay.*

*if you know the reference, then you are the most amazing person ever. EVER.


	4. dignity

**under the same sun**

**[dignity]  
****summary: **in retrospect, she always knew he was more important than she was. Too bad he didn't see it like that.  
**characters: **Obito, Rin, Kakashi  
**honorable mentions: **Minato, Uchiha clan  
**rating: **_M_…wait. what? no, no, no…it's just a _T.  
_**note1: **politics used to be pretty heavily entwined with ninjas when they were used, so i think it would be only obvious that being from a clan would make Obito more vital than, let's say, Rin or even Kakashi. then again, i'm getting all my ninja-info from forums online. not to mention i'm eating some soy ice cream and drinking a cup of cold coffee (mostly comprised of 30% coffee, 60% espresso shots, and 10% ice.  
**note2:** this snowballed from a pretty cool concept into a cheese-fest of (almost) epic proportions. enjoy the huge wall of text (that is no longer considered a 'drabble' anymore, since it exceeds 1, 000 words by 2, 8213 words) coming at you. i'm going to need a beta if these get any longer. -_-"

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They didn't talk about it, but the fact that Obito was a _Uchiha_, made them all a little more aware at who was more important person in terms of diplomatic status. The Uchiha clan triumphed over all the others in the village in terms of infamy, making each member drastically more vital than the average shinobi.

Especially compared someone like her, a virtual nobody with no clan attachments and no family to speak of, Obito was the more imperative member of their unit.

Protecting him from harm, all to avoid political backlash of losing a valuable clan member, was at the forefront of their minds during missions. Even Kakashi, someone who barely tolerated the bubbly ninja, knew that in status Obito was far more significant. Maybe it grated on his nerves when he thinks about how truly advanced Obito in comparison to him when it came to social importance, and he made sure to belittle him and his ninja capabilities when he could.

Minato didn't say anything to them about the raven haired boy when they first formed their unit. It was left unsaid, however; they all knew about the Uchiha's rich history engraved in Konoha. To Rin, it seemed only logical to try to keep Obito secure on the battlefield when possible. What would the repercussions be if he were killed and someone like her spared? The injustice of how political the shinobi world weighed heavily on her.

Coming from a nonexistent background, she understood better than anyone how unfair it was to see capable ninja being sacrificed to protect someone who had connections to clans of importance in villages and countries. She didn't begrudge Obito this – she couldn't even if she tried – since he had no idea of how things worked. His blissful obliviousness on the world was envied, and at times she wished she could share his level of carelessness when it came to things about being a shinobi.

They all knew to keep it from him – an unspoken agreement that outlasted whatever bitterness someone held – to protect his dignity. At least, she tried to, and she was sure Minato did too. Kakashi had no qualms of dropping subtle hints here and there. Thankfully (or unfortunately, depending on who was saying it) Obito wouldn't notice hints even if they were the size of pianos and dropped on top of him.

When he did find out – not due to carelessness or a slip of the tongue by any of his teammates – from a malicious enemy during a mission in a poorer land, he didn't react in the way Rin expected. He stood there, eyes wide and body trembling as the ninja jeered at him about social class and castes they fell under. Obito was part of a privileged group who would be protected even in war. His significance to the grand scheme of things was higher than that of a regular shinobi who came from civilian parents.

She kept her head bowed against the binds that tied her to the tree, feeling his intense gaze lingering on her. Rin wasn't sure how to meet his stare, knowing that he _knew_, that he would be second-guessing his capabilities as a ninja (thinking about all the things Kakashi said) and wondering if they were true. The thoughts that must have rushed through his head were simply unimaginable to her.

What would she do if that was her?

Probably demand to know if she was _worth_ it, if the only reason she was standing where she is was because of her last name. It must have been awful for him. She wanted to rush up and hug him, tell him that he was worth it, regardless of his clan. That he deserved it.

She refused to meet his eyes the entire journey home. Even Kakashi was silent, something she never expected. She was positive that if Obito found out, the silver-haired boy wouldn't miss the opportunity to throw it in his face.

Nobody said much of anything.

Obito, someone who never missed the chance to prove his worth and shine above all others, was docile. He skipped breakfast the next morning after finishing their mission, and was waiting by the village's exit, stuff packed and eyes downcast. Rin's medical prowess gave her the sneaking suspicion that he hadn't slept at all last night, but from the hunched, guarded expression on his face, she thought better to bring it up.

The silence they traveled was awkward and lingered when they reached the gates of Konoha, something Rin was hoping with dissipate overtime and they'd all be back to their usual selves. Seeing Obito rush ahead, mumbling about being tried and needing to get home, made her chest ache.

It wasn't his fault. None of this was. He didn't need to hide from them – they were a team; they needed to work things out together. Maybe she should have said something, told him that he was capable without the guise of being a Uchiha hanging over his head wherever they went. It wasn't as though the clan _needed _the extra protection; they had one of the most fearsome eye techniques ever. They could take care of themselves without someone looking out for them.

Hopefully Obito could see that.

* * *

Rin was growing increasingly worried as the weeks past.

Obito's depressive episode following their return to the village was something she hadn't expected. Usually he could bounce back from pretty much anything; this uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm was making her anxious. Sometimes he didn't even show up for practice.

The longest she went without seeing him before was a day, maybe two, but now it was bordering on _days_, almost weeks, where her days strangely lacked a certain Uchiha. Things just weren't the same without him bounding into the hospital, easily upsetting most of the people around him (although, she didn't notice until now that most of them wore bright smiles when they saw him, too), and trying to flirt with her.

It was empty without him around.

She didn't like it.

Her concern for her teammate and friend wasn't something she was experiencing by herself. Minato was also looking more and more troubled at his absence. More than once he mentioned his uncharacteristic mood changes, conveying a deep sympathy for the onyx haired boy. More surprising was Kakashi utter silence on the matter. He didn't go out of his way to drag Obito down, per se, but he usually wouldn't miss a chance to snidely rub it in.

Rin wasn't sure what was happening to her team.

Obito was MIA for days at a time (and when he did show up, he looked worse for wear), Kakashi was oddly silent, she was feeling more anxious as they days past, and Minato came back empty-handed each time he went looking for their teammate. This wasn't how things was supposed to go.

Maybe she couldn't understand where Obito's mindset was now, but she wanted to help her teammate. He was important to her, and seeing him so…down was troubling. It hurt her to watch him refuse to meet their gaze or turn into a reclusive when he was such an extrovert.

She was going to find him.

Making him see his worth would be easy…Obito just needed some encouragement to bring back his usual confidence. She would do it today when she finished up her shift at the hospital. He only needed a little pep-talk and he'd be back to normal – they'd be back to normal.

Wouldn't they?

* * *

No matter how many times she went there, the beauty of the Uchiha compound always took her breath away. It looked gorgeous during this time of day when the sun was about to set. Mid-autumn made the trees turn a ripe orange and red color, showering the bustling side-streets in a flurry of leaves. She knew some of the people she saw, waving to them in a friendly gesture.

It still made her feel a little out-of-place standing in the middle of such important people, and she tried to disquiet this voice down before she saw Obito. It surprised her how different he was in contrast to the other Uchiha's, with their stoic faces and air of superiority. He was unique; his ideals and dreams escaped the confines of his clan and the village.

He lived with his grandmother on the outskirts of the compound, nestled away in a shrubbery of cherry blossoms and a koi pond. Rin used to love coming over his house when they first met each other and became friends. They would sit by the pond, eating a plate of dangos whilst his grandmother tended to the little garden.

She knocked on the door lightly, hoping that everything would be back to normal soon.

"E-eh? Rin-chan? What are you doing here?"

Rin was sad to hear the noticeable lack of enthusiasm in his voice. "Hey, Obito, I wanted to see how you were doing…"

The dark circles under his eyes were testament to how he was doing. He looked tired…no, exhausted was a better word. The medic inside of her begged to reprimand him about taking care of himself, to explain to him the importance of sleep, but it was quieted by the concerned friend shining through. She wanted to hug him closely to her and tell him everything would be okay, but she was beginning to realize that maybe a 'little pep-talk' wasn't going work.

"I'm fine," it sounded forced even to her ears.

He must have thought so too, wincing after the clipped reply, and casting his eyes down. It was disheartening to see him this way, paler than usual, looking sick, and lacking his usual all-consuming vibrancy. She tried to understand his despondent reaction to something she grew up knowing, but could barely scratch the surface.

"You're not, Obito…"

"Its okay, Rin," he insisted, inching the door closed, "just go back to Kakashi and stop worrying about me," the way he spat his teammates name made her wince. "Oh, wait; you can't right? Because it's part of your _job_ to make sure _Uchiha_ is safe."

The way he said it broke her heart even more. She wanted to rush over, hug him close to her, and convince him that she wasn't here because it was her _job_. Protecting him, that little voice that repeated his name over and over again in the back of her mind when they went on missions, wasn't something she did because she was supposed to. Doing it, making sure he was okay, was an expression of her trust in him, her love for her team, and the need to want him to be safe. He did things without thinking, acting without cause to protect and care for someone, and to Rin, that made him the most vulnerable out of them all.

The ninja world wasn't filled with butterflies and rainbows. It was cruel to those who wandered down its path. Some people went down lighthearted, loving, and accepting and came out hearted shells of their former selves. Other walked the path already looking for a fight, to break someone down, and to gain control and destruction, coming out worse than before (or in rare cases, better). Either way, it was ingrained in everyone's subconscious that when they choose to become a shinobi, life would never be the same.

She wanted to shield Obito from that, even if it meant blinding him in the process. People would destroy someone like him in an instant. He was too compassionate, and that made others envious because empathy was lost on them and they knew it. Rin wanted to say that she wasn't cruel, but that wouldn't necessarily be true. In her hands, the choice of life or death settled heavily, and she had more than her fair share of blood staining them. Being a medical-ninja, she was trained to know where to kill, how to kill, and when to kill during her practice. If needed, they could send her when they pleased to charade herself around as a ditzy medic, only to be undercover as an assassin.

Konoha was a well-to-do village, and taking up missions of murder wasn't often enforced on the younger genin and chunin. It didn't mean it never happened, that people didn't die by hers, Kakashi's, or Obito's hands, but it wasn't so extreme and frequent like it was in some poorer villages.

They knew hardships.

When she first met Obito, stumbling in late for the academy exam, she knew right then and there that he needed to be protected. He was the proverbial light that drew people to its flame – some seeking more than heat and comfort; they sought to contaminate those who lingered around the light before infecting the light itself.

She didn't want to see him fall. If he became hardened and evil, what would happen to someone like her? Rin didn't want to think about it – couldn't think about it – and pushed it to the back of her mind. It was too painful to even consider. She liked that he was so ebullient, regardless of the situation

"That's not true, Obito." She watched helplessly as his face clouded over in disbelief. He shook his head, but she refused to let him believe that she was lying to him. "Yes, we're supposed to protect you and watch you because of your last name, but is that the only reason? No. we do it because we're a team, and teammates – no, _friends_ – are supposed to look out for each other."

Rin felt lost as she tried desperately to convey how he was worth more than the Uchiha name bestowed upon him. Usually, when she spoke, her words was soaked up by him like a sponge. He was barely listening to her now; an impenetrable wall of self-pity and embarrassment.

He was worth it and so much more.

"We're friends, okay? I wouldn't even think twice about protecting you-"

"But you're not supposed to, Rin!" His hands were suddenly holding her shoulders in a hard grip that was so unlike him, it made her gasp loudly. "I'm supposed to protect _you_; not the other way around."

"Obito, I…"

"I can't stand it…" He whispered, dropping his head and slacking his clutch on her shoulders. "Kakashi, sensei, and even you, all looking out for me…And yet, I can't even do the same. Maybe," she heard the shutting intake of breath from him and her heart froze in a deep ache at the sound. "Maybe…Kakashi was right. I'm not meant to be a ninja. I'm barely able to carry the Uchiha name without insulting or embarrassing someone from my clan…I'm a useless person, Rin. And I-"

"Stop it already!" His heart wrenching words – a confessional she didn't deserve to hear, but was honored immensely for the opportunity, to be the person he trusted enough to share it with – made her eyes sting, welling with tears she let shed without hesitance. Jerking forward, she threw herself into his embrace, linking her arms around his midsection and burying her face inside the crook of his neck. "You're worth it, Obito, and so much more. You are so much better than anyone I've ever met, and probably anyone I'll ever meet. I…I don't want you to doubt yourself at all! You've come so _far_ since the academy days! Can't you see it? You've grown so much…matured so much…_changed_ so much…"

This wasn't the first time she's hugged him, yet it was so much more personal than before. She felt warm in his embrace, with his arms hanging loosely between them, fingers digging into her skin, biting harshly from the shock of sudden intimacy in her displayed between them. She clung to him tightly, refusing to let go, wanting to communicate how much she truly appreciated him and how his capabilities of a ninja were unquestionable. Protecting him was not an obligation but unconscious thing inside of her that snapped to attention when he was in close proximity.

"You're _worth_ it, Obito…Not your name, or your history, but _you_," she urged, digging her face into his neck, trying to press herself into him. She wanted him not to just _hear _her words, but to feel them too. "We protect you because we _care_, and we'd do it whether you were a Uchiha or not."

His arms slipped out from between them, and wound around her back, dissipating the nonexistent space between them. Rin could feel his heart beating erratically against her own chest (or was that her own heartbeat?) and the heat from his body seeping into her very core. He seemed to melt into her embrace, liquefying in her arms as the emotional turmoil and mental stress took its toll and drained him of the little energy he was running on.

They stayed in their grasp for a while, Obito silently crying on Rin's shoulder, as she pretended not to notice the body-wracking sobs that emanated from the boy in her clutch. She held on to him, refusing to be the one to let go first. That option to break the contact was his. He needed this more than she did, and (if she was being honest with herself) it felt nice to have him so physically close to her, to be the one to share his struggle and help him overcome it.

The shaking of his body from the force of his sobs was slowing down, and she slackened her hold slightly, trying to regain feeling back in her shoulders from the awkward hold she had on him. A unique musk clung to him; a blend between a hot summery day and rain on hot concrete. She inhaled, basking in the scent, and the feel of his warmth pressing against her. Their casual hugs (usually done in celebration of competing a particularly long mission or when Minato agreed to pay for their dinner after training) were never as deep as this. Rin felt so comfortable in his embrace; sleepiness welling up inside of her, consuming her like it had Obito, after the long, emotional weeks of constant worrying and fretting over his well-being and metal state of mind.

Seeing him finally releasing everything made her smile softly into the soft black hair tickling her nose.

She heard him sniff loudly before he began to pull away. Slackening her grip on him, Rin allowed him to slowly separate from her, and took a step back, giving him some personal space.

He wiped his face on his black sleeve, bowing his head to hide the tear stains on his cheeks and chin. Allowing him the privacy, she looked away, out toward the pond and at the lingering twilight surrounding them. They'd been out there for a while, she guessed, bringing her arms up around her mid-section.

She was a little intimidated to look at him now, after the way she reacted. Hugging him out of nowhere, saying all those things – she meant every last word, but they were a little embarrassing and heavily inclining to something a…concerned lover would say – and acting brash, was all unusual and out of character for her. A heated flush danced across the bridge of her nose when Obito whispered her name.

Glancing shyly at him, she quickly attempted to weed out the awkwardness around them with a bright smile. "Do you feel better now, Obito?"

"Y-yeah," he stuttered, his face the same shade – maybe a little darker – as hers. "Thanks, Rin…"

"You're going to start coming to training everyday now? And get the proper sleep – don't give me that look, Obito – I'm a medic, I know these things – that you need?"

He answered with a sarcastic: "yes, mum," before smiling at her. "Really though, Rin-chan – ah, thanks. I mean it…"

"Any time, Obito; I'm here when you need me, because we're _friends_."

"I know."

The onyx haired boy nodded seriously, holding her gaze with the depth of his sincerity and compassion for her. Her heart sputtered in her chest (she blamed it on the lack of sleep and heavy emotional drama she went through – _not _because his smile was really adorable, or because he seemed so much…_older_ and mature now) and she clasped her hand over it, gasping.

_Obito…?_ She wondered, awestruck. Was she…? No, that wasn't possible; he was her friend. He needed her, and that was all.

…Wasn't it?

"Aw, gees," he suddenly exclaimed, breaking her away from her slight epiphany she had. "I can't believe I cried in front of a _girl_ – and it was Rin-chan, too! Ugh, how lame! I bet Kakashi never went through this. Damn, that's so not _cool_." His eyes shot her hers, desperation seeping into his gaze and voice. "Rin-chan, could you not tell anyone about this? I wasn't crying because I was, you know, ashamed or anything – my grandmother made really spicy wasabi and I touched it earlier, and it got into my eyes – yeah, that's it! She's going old, you know? Senility and all that…Eh, hehe…"

Her brow arched up at his mood-swing. "Looks like someone feels better."

"Pft, like I was feeling depressed anyway! That's for _losers_, Rin-chan! You should know this by now! Only stupid people – like Kakashi and Gai – get all broody and sappy, you know? That's so not me…"

Shaking her head, she smiled softly, relieved to see him back to his old self again. Her heart calmed down, and she let her hand fall away from her chest, rolling her eyes at herself (and Obito, who seemed to absorb some kind of energy and was now talking about the difference between him compared to Kakashi and Gai).

She turned to leave, saying an exasperated goodbye to Obito – and his offhanded suggestion of a contest between the three men, with her as the judge, and him trying to bribe her already – who blinked owlishly at her from behind his goggles that he'd slipped on during his explanation of Kakashi and Gai being _so not as cool as him_.

"Ah, Rin-chan…" she heard him say, and glanced over her shoulder at him. His shoulders were squared in a confident stance she'd never seen him take before, and his hands were shoved deep inside his trouser pockets. The looks on his face, however, was what truly caught her attention. He wore a serene grin on his face, and his eyes held a deep appreciation in their dark depths. Her breath caught in her throat. "Thanks, for everything."

His smile widened, and then without waiting for a reply, he nodded and turned around, heading into his house. Rin watched with wide eyes at his leave, her mouth hanging open in shock.

Her heart shuddered in her chest once again.

There was no way she could have fallen for Obito a moment ago.

…Right?

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**note3: **i think i properly conveyed Obito's ability to bounce back almost instantaneously – maybe, but probably not. ah, well. This was in Rin's POV instead of my usual tendency of doing it in Obito's…i just didn't think it'd be portrayed properly if i went on about how "Kakashi, Rin, and Minato had to protect [him] all the time," and would lose a bunch of readers due to boredom. and, aw, Rin's confused about her feelings for Obito~ how cute. ^^  
**note4:** wanna drop a line? seriously, it's cool if you do – i swear i don't bite…! please? i'm so lonely… :( next chapter will have so much romance you're face will melt off. (no promises; i can't write romance to save my life, but i will try)! so, please review.


	5. kiss

**under the same sun**

**[kiss]  
****summary: **_kissing is like drinking salted water. You drink, and your thirst increases. _Chinese Proverb  
**rating: **T  
**note1:** i kind of failed at writing drabbles in the previous chapters, but this _could _be considered one. maybe. probably not.  
**note2:** forgive the cheese-fest; i tried my hand at romance and ended up butchering the genre. i'm more comfortable at angst and pseudo-romance.

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Obito Uchiha was kissing her.

His lips were wet and warm as they alternated between a series of mouth-mouthed kisses to light pecks. Unable to find purchase, his hands moved from her cheeks, to her hips, to her shoulders, and back again, touching her delicately, as though he were afraid she'd break.

This was her idea – because she was curious to know what it felt like to kiss someone, and who better to ask than her best friend? – and now she was having second thoughts. It was supposed to be an unaffected kiss; something that she could both look back on and shrug about, but now, she was beginning to worry.

Instead of feeling nothing, a flurry of emotions were running rampant though her. Why did it feel so _right_ doing this with him? She wasn't supposed to feel anything this monumental about kissing Obito.

She'd always heard the phrase – and even used it sometimes, especially on Obito – _curiosity killed the cat_, and never realized that it was true until now. Hearing about her friends all having their first kiss stirred something inside of her; she wanted to know what it would be like to kiss someone. Who better than he best friend?

Rin should have known that nothing good would've come from this, but her own curiosity and interest made her ask. Obito readily agreed, sounding a little too enthusiastic (only deflating a little when she'd said it was for research only), and eagerly asked when she wanted to do it.

The sooner the better, she though, and the next thing she knew, his lips were pressed against her own. It started out as a chaste, friendly peck on the lips before escalating to something deeper. It was a little awkward, too; their teeth knocked together, noses rubbed against each other, their lips were pressed too harshly together, causing an ache, and her heart was beating painfully in her chest. It wasn't an idealistic first kiss at all.

She didn't know where to put her own hands, and her nose was beginning to hurt a little.

And…this was _Obito Uchiha_.

Rin was blushing and her heart wouldn't slow down at all through the kiss.

Now, she didn't want him to stop.

Much too soon for her liking, Obito broke apart, resting his forehead against hers. His onyx eyes bored into her brown ones, pure adoration shining through in their dark depths, and a dark red flush spread across his cheeks. The intensity of his gaze pierced right through her, stunning her with heavy eyes, fully of emotion. Swimming in those dark depths, she could see happiness, a gentle glow, and…love. Swallowing, she attempted to put some distance between herself and those _confounding _onyx eyes, but was haled when his hands dropped from her shoulders to her waist, pulling her in close

Their breath mingled in the sliver of space between their bodies

Rin could count every freckle (nine, to be exact), every blemish (he had a little scar above his forehead), and every emotion playing across his face (he looked nervous, happy, and scared all at once). He seemed a little unsure now; but that determination she usually saw cross his face every time he wanted to win something (either against Kakashi, Gai or Minato) was shining through.

She felt a little nervous – almost nauseous, really – in the silence that overtook them after the kiss. It was embarrassing to think of; her inexperience (as well has his) was so clearly displayed. The kiss was…nice, though. His lips were soft and warm, and being in his arms made her feel so comfortable.

"How was that?" He asked, the flush on his cheeks deepening, and his voice sounding low and hoarse. "Was it a good _first kiss_?"

Rin could only nod numbly in reply, her mouth still tingling. She wanted him to kiss her again, and again, and again, until she was thoroughly satisfied, but couldn't bring herself to act on those whims. The ramifications of her actions would undoubtedly hurt Obito in the end if she was unable to follow through with them wholly.

Causing him aby unnecessary pain was unbearable to her, especially if she would've been the cause of his heartache. Even now – doing this, asking him to kiss her as though it was no big deal – she was doing it; selfishly tormenting him with her conflicting emotions and feelings. She loved Obito, but had yet to decide if she was _in love _with him.

She knew there were some lingering feelings that bypassed the normal friendship boundary, but before she acted on anything or lead him on, Rin wanted to be completely sure. He deserved that much – and more than what she was able to give him.

Still…The sudden insatiable need to lean forward and press her lips to his again was almost too much to ignore.

She was afraid of the consequences for doing something so risqué like that. Her conflicting emotions on the onyx haired boy were another contributing factor to her hesitance. They were friends. She loved him – and at times, that love was stronger than simply being _just friends_ – but was she ready to take that leap into the unknown?

His lips looked so inviting, though…

"Are you okay?" He asks, pulling away from her slightly.

Already she missed the warmth of his embrace.

How was she supposed to stop now that she started? It was so tempting to just say the words that were gnawing at her, let him know and go from there. She _liked _Obito, her best friend, but the foreign concept of jumping into something without a plan didn't seem practical.

Since when was love practical or logical?

Rin smiled softly at him, leaning forward to chastely brush her lips against his own. "Kiss me again, Obito-kun," she whispered.

Walking into unknowing territory without a game plan seemed like a brash thing to do, but when it came to her and Obito, Rin found that being spontaneous was best.

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**note3: **this seems too rushed and…_bleh_. how do you guys feel about the (semi) romance in this drabble? too little? to cliché? tell me if you absolutely hate it and i'll try something different. do you guys like the drabbles longer or shorter?  
**note4**: first kisses are never fun, and this is a prime example of why i don't do romance.


	6. reverse

**under the same sun**

**[reverse]  
****summary**: _in an alternate universe, Rin loves Obito Uchiha.  
_**rating: **K  
**note1: **after watching _Naruto Shippudden: Road to Ninja_, i fell in love with the concept. so, this plot-bunny has bounced back and forth in my head ever since, and finally decided to come out.  
**note2: **attention: shocker – no angst. very mild fluff, though, and a little role reversal pinning.

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There was something about Obito Uchiha that made her heart flutter in her chest, her palms start to get clammy, and her face grow hot, burning a deep scarlet. He wasn't like the other boys – generic repeats of testosterone and several complexes complete with useless ideals of power and prowess all just to impress someone else. Obito was different; he didn't care about what other people thought and strived to be the best he could, not to show-off, but for himself. It was a refreshing change, one that she had no qualms about.

It was strange that a boy like him would catch her attention – the ever studious bookworm, studying years early for her medical exam, when she had yet to even make chunin – though. He was something new to her daily routine; a welcome addition that caused her, without fail, to grin like an idiot and blush until the markings on her cheeks was gone.

This out of character reaction to him was something that didn't go amiss among her friends. They all knew she liked Obito – it would have been difficult not to notice – and often questioned her sanity. Why would someone like Rin have a crush on someone like Obito Uchiha? In reverse, Rin asked herself the same question. He was so sunny and exuberant, whilst she was soft-spoken and goal-orientated.

It was almost impossible for _him_ to like_ her_.

The childish ideal of actually confessing to him (what would she do? Tell him how much she enjoyed him company? Ask him out to dinner? What did they have in common? Nothing) was laughable. He was the polar opposite of her, and the only similar trait they shared was their kindness and compassion.

Obito was the prime example of everything good and honorable. He embodied everything that was light and optimistic, while her general outlook on life was a little skewered and less excitable. That wasn't to say she was completely pessimistic (she wasn't), Rin was more of a realist.

Convinced the silly crush would pass, she waited it out. It would be easy to ignore the beating of her heart, the slickness of her palms, and the nervous churning in her stomach when he was around. Being on the same team with him wasn't helping her plight. The majority of her time was spent around him, training, going on missions, or otherwise. It was difficult to be so close to his warmth, to _him_, that in some instances she forgot herself in the moment.

She could still remember the day Kurenai asked her _why_ she liked Obito Uchiha, of all people, when she had someone like Kakashi Hakate on her team. The question was so strange to her at the time; who _couldn't_ like him? To her, it was simply impossible not to fall for that infectious laugh and those charming grins. While she did admit that Kakashi had the talent and the looks, she wasn't interested in the superficial things on display. Being around Obito, she was able to experience so many new things that she normally would have overlooked.

The way he viewed things, the way he was so relaxed and took everything in stride, the way he was seemingly impervious to the people who tried to knock him down, all inspired her to try to reach his all-encompassing love and acceptance. She couldn't pinpoint the exact time when she fell for him – only that it probably had something to do with one of his grins – but she did know that the moment he turned to her, eyes squinted with the force of his smile, and said a cheery, "_good morning, Rin-chan!_" Her heart never quite worked the same after that.

It was filled with _Obito Uchiha_, and that didn't seem to be changing any time soon.

"Hey, Rin-chan!" He called, grinning broadly behind a glowering Kakashi. "Are you coming?"

Smiling back, she nodded her head and turned back to Kurenai. "I don't know," she answered honestly, shrugging slightly. "I just woke up one day and he was suddenly right in front of me."

That was the day Rin gave up.

Not on her crush. No, she's convinced that maybe one day (especially when Obito lagged behind to walk next to her, and casually threw and arm around her shoulders, looking down at her – and was that a tinge of red behind his goggles? – with a serene smile on his face) Obito would return her feelings. All she had to do was wait patiently for him to catch up to her, and he was a pretty fast learner when he wanted, so she knew he'd meet her at the end eventually.

Until then, she only had to listen to her friend's incredulous responses as they tried to process that for some strange, unfathomable reason, Rin was hopelessly in love with Obito Uchiha.

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**note3: **it's super short and really ambiguously opened, but i kind of like it. just a little. (:  
**note4**: was Obito actually _cool_ in this?! =O i think i was channeling a bit of Rin Okamura in this one. i finally caught up with the Naruto manga – Rin dies and Obito pretty much rage quits reality. -_-" but…607 chapters later and we still don't know why Rin was killed (**spoiler:** bykakashihakateimeanbywho?) hurry and tell us MK; i need more ideas for my next drabble! please review. =D


	7. fantasy

**under the same sun**

**[fantasy]  
****summary:** in which, Rin is the star of Obito's idle fantasies.  
**rating: **K  
**characters:** Obito, Rin  
**honorable mentions: **Kakashi  
**note1: **um…sorry? this was supposed to be up on Friday, but Netflix was updated and i spent all weekend lounging in my bed watching _Arrested Development _and _Breaking Bad_.  
**note2: **this isn't my best, and i kind of wanted to do more with the prompt, but i couldn't really come up with anything that was blatantly uncharacteristic or creepy, so this was born. hopefully you all like it!

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Sometimes Obito thinks about just grabbing Rin and kissing her.

He does this a lot, actually – making up different scenarios inside his mind about what would happen if he did it one day. Would she be disgusted by it or would she kiss him back? Would she like it or would she hate it? These questions plague him with each fantasy he has about her; unanswerable, taunting him with _what ifs'_ that keep him guessing all the time.

What _would _Rin do if he just grabbed her and kissed her one day?

Sometimes, he thinks about doing it – and she'd gasp from the brazen, unexpected move, but then slowly start to kiss him back. They would slowly pull away from each other, blushes adorning their faces and he'd say something _cool_, and Rin would giggle at his joke, smiling cutely at _him_.

Then he would say: _I like you, Rin-chan._

And she's say it back.

Sometimes, the _happily ever after_ doesn't happen, though. Those daydreams usually happen after a bad mission or when he watches Rin pin after Kakashi during training. It's the same theme: he kisses her on a whim and it progresses from there. She might kiss him back and confess her love for him, or she might not. Instead of loving or kissing him back, she pushes him away and whispers corrosive words that sound so strange coming from her sweet voice.

_I like Kakashi-kun, not you, Obito-san._

It _hurts _when he has those daydreams – which are more like nightmares, really – and he can't stop them. They come and go; some good, some bad, each of them different, but the theme is the same. He kisses her and she either likes him back or doesn't. Really, it's simple when he thinks about it.

(Only, it's not.)

What would she do if he actually does it one day?

"What are you thinking about, Obito-san?"

The suddenness of her voice (that sounds so much better in real life than in his daydreams) was completely unexpected. Startled, he jumps a little when she sits beside him, laughing softly at his embarrassing display of nerves. His face burns scarlet at her close proximity, but he tries to feign ignorance to her question.

"I-I wasn't thinking about a-anything, Rin-chan – h-honest!" he says hurriedly, wiping furiously at his cheeks to cool them down.

Rin giggles (why does it have to sound so cute?) and nods, "if you say so…"

"I-I do!"

She nods and turns away from him, watching the rest of Minato's and Kakashi's spar, leaving her profile completely open. He openly stares, taking in everything from her brown hair framing her face to the gentle curve of her nose, the soft protruding outline of her lips, the red markings on her pale cheek, down to the sharp drop of her chin to her neck, and back to her lips once again.

She's beautiful.

He swallows thickly as the sudden urge to lean over and kiss her becomes almost too much to bare. Her pale pink lips look so inviting stretched out in a soft smile…

She turns to him then, catching in him the act. He blushes profusely and tries to apologize for staring so openly, when he glances in her eyes and catches the amusement shining through the endless pools of brown that always seem to captivate him.

His breath catches in his throat when she smiles playfully at him, sending his heart into a panicked frenzy and igniting his cheeks. He must look like a tomato by now, but being so close to Rin always did that to him.

One day he might actually do it – just reach over and kiss her. She might push him away, tell him that she doesn't have the same feelings for him – and it would hurt, of course it would – but he wouldn't mind. At least he got to kiss her, right? And besides, she could also kiss him back, and return his feelings.

Who knew what she might do?

(Rin was kind of hard to read behind those soft smiles and cute grins.

But just sitting right beside her was way better than any fantasy could ever be.)

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**note3: **this is really lame and i apologize. my muse has been kind of skewered lately, but i promise the next one will be better (hopefully).  
**note4: **thank you for all the amazing reviews and favorites! =D


	8. gone

**under the same sun**

**[gone]  
****summary: **she tries so hard to make herself forget, but the constant reminder that he was gone and wasn't ever coming back never left her.  
**rating: **T  
**characters: **Rin, Kakashi  
**honorable mentions: **Obito, Minato, Kushina  
**note1: **i've been kind of lame with updating – and school is really kicking my ass now, so this is a product of no sleep, too much homework, and a lot of coffee.  
**note2: **there will be some _slight_ (like, so minuscule that you'd need a magnifying glass just to see it) KakaRin (basically friendship if you wanted to label it) in this. just a little though – it fit in with the plot, so i used it.

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She couldn't do it.

The gates, mockingly inviting her inside the safe haven that was her home, were nearing closer with each step she took, looming overhead like a storm cloud. She knew eventually she would reach them, walk through the frame that announced Konoha's symbol, and back into the melancholy that was her village.

She would be swept up into the constant reminder that a piece of her was missing – long gone with nothing but a name etched on stone, a few clumsily taken pictures, and miscellaneous things she couldn't bring herself to throw out.

The worst was probably the drastic change between her team, standing out obvious and painful, and once she entered back into her regular life, she would have to endure it all over again.

Although the village remained untouchable, her team took the greatest hit.

Kakashi was listless, Minato was solemn, and she was…_numb_.

The pain – raw, aching, and constant – was lessened by the months that passed since _it _happened, but the sense of detachment she felt was worse than the wrenching agony that ripped through her, feeling fresh and new with each passing second. Being a medic, she was well aware of the grief and stress she was placing on her mental state that was affecting her physical well-being, and (the surplus of volunteer missions she took to avoid the village – her _home_) was taking its toll on her body.

Drained of chakra and energy, and running on only three hours of sleep, she's exhausted.

Being busy, however, without allowing any time to think (to remember, to _feel_) enabled her to temporarily stop the onslaught of emotions from spilling over her when she was alone with her thoughts. Forgetting was never an option, though – it wasn't even a possibility. She would never be able to completely erase _it _from her mind.

Seeing _him_ lying there, blood pooling around him, the thick crunch of rock hitting soft flesh, and _knowing_ that there was almost nothing she – or anybody else – could do for him. What was the purpose of practicing and memorizing thick texts of medical knowledge if she wasn't able to help someone she cared about? If she couldn't save _him_, how was she going to save others - complete strangers?

The gates came into view and her heart sunk.

It used to give her a sign of homeliness, a sense of comfort after a long journey – not a feeling of foreboding and regret that settled heavily over her shoulders. Everything about the village caused the familiar ache to start anew, causing her to relive the tragic day when she lost someone so precious to her, leaving a grisly reminder that he was gone and wasn't ever coming back.

It hurt so much thinking about it.

Passing into the village, she waved weakly to the jonin standing guard, and trudged the same path to her house. There was no point in stopping to see if anyone was at the training ground anymore – Kakashi was never around anymore (or maybe she never saw him because she was too busy trying to avoid them both), and Minato was busying himself with Hokage preparations and his wife, Kushina.

Seeing her team only made her worse, and she hated feeling so bitter about it. This wasn't her usual persona; she didn't sulk or mourn so openly like this. Rin kept her grief to herself, careful not to pass it along to anyone else. It wasn't fair to make others suffer because of her loss.

However, she wasn't the only one.

They all were hurting and couldn't find the strength to put on a brave front, and so they hid from each other. It wasn't helping them to run from their problems, but it felt so much better than facing the reality that their teammate was gone, breaking their four-man cell into a simple trio that didn't quite fit together anymore.

Someone would replace him eventually. A stranger would fill that blank void caused by his disappearance from their lives. She hated thinking about that – masquerading around someone else who tried to replace_ him_. It was selfish of her to want to postpone the date when they would be assigned a new teammate indefinitely – or at least until she could look at one of her team member without wanting to cry.

The changes following his…absence from her life were tangible.

Kakashi was barely in her mind.

She didn't even want to see him anymore.

It was kind of ironic to think of how desperately _he_ wanted her to think about him, and now that he's gone, his wish was finally granted. How cruel was she…? All she could think of was _him_. His laugh, his eyes, his passion, his humor, his voice…every painstaking moment is spent either trying to avoid the subject or being unable to.

It was a horrible repetition that cycled over and over, never relinquishing the cold grip it had over her.

"Rin," the familiar drawl of his voice was unmistakable.

She quickened her pace, trying to run away from him without making it too obvious. Why did he have to be here? He was constantly trying to talk to her – about what happened, about why she didn't go – and she couldn't deal with what he would undoubtedly bring up.

His hand wrapped around her forearm, stopping her haste to get away. "Rin, stop it and listen to me."

She shivers – from the _sorrow _in his voice that's he desperately trying to hide – and tries to move away, to put some distance between them. "I'm busy, Kakashi-kun," she lies (for the first times to him, she notes with a bitter hint of guilt), "can this wait?"

"I've waited," he says, and it hurts to hear his voice sounding so nostalgic, digging up painful memories of when he used that same tone with _him_. "Every time I try to talk to you, you runaway from me – and I'm not letting that happen today."

"I-I'm busy."

"Were you too _busy_ to go to his funeral, too?" The words aren't meant to be spiteful, to cause her any harm, but she still finds herself flinching at his silence observation.

The funeral was exactly three months and seven days ago. Kakashi was a pallbearer, along with Minato, and the Hokage even said some words in his favor – or so she'd heard. Rin didn't go, and spent the day wallowing inside her house, tucked neatly under the covers as the cold winds blew in through her open windows. The silence was almost deafening.

She couldn't do it, though. Standing among his family and friends as she trying to put on a brave face (and pretended that everything was going to be alright, but knowing that he partly died because of _her_) would've been too much to handle. Instead she spent the day in her room, refusing to move from her perch on the bed.

"That's…" she mutters weakly, unable to offer a rebuttal. "Don't do this now, kakashi-kun…"

"When do you want to do it then, Rin?" His grip tightens on her arm, and she welcomes the slight twinge of pain it creates, relishing in the fact that it was external for once. "He's...still gone, no matter when we talk."

Neither of them can say his name. It's a fact that doesn't go unnoticed, but remains unsaid.

"I…Can't do this now, Kakashi-kun, please…"

"Rin," suddenly she being tugged to his hard chest and the contrast between _his _soft embraces and Kakashi's awkward, distant ones are almost too noticeable. "He told me to protect you, and I will."

Her eyes widen at his confession – did he really say to protect her? – and she tenses in Kakashi's arms. Why would he want that, of all things, to be his last wish? Who was she to him? A teammate? A friend? It didn't make any sense…Unless…No, she couldn't think about _that_; there was a new pain, a new emotion, which she didn't want to ponder over – _ever_.

He tightens his hold on her for a second before letting go. Cautiously, he wraps his hand around her wrist and brings her gaze to his eyes. She couldn't even look at his face. The bandages around his eye - the operation that she did – are too raw and bring about too many painful emotions.

"Come with me, Rin."

Everything inside is battling against that suggestion, refusing to endure any more anguish. It would be too damaging to go wherever Kakashi wanted to take her. She knew where he would bring her; that marble slab of stone with engravings carved all around it – names of various ninja who fought and died for their village.

She couldn't do it.

"All right," she whispered against all that told her not to, resigning herself to the guilt and torment that would undoubtedly surface.

Kakashi gave her one last reassuring squeeze, the sorrow of her own eyes reflecting back at her in his grey-ish depths, before pulling her along the path she had yet to walk.

* * *

She was wrong – it didn't just hurt, it _burned._

Clawing at her chest to reassure herself that her heart was still pumping inside her, and not tossed, torn to pieces, in a barrel of salt and vinegar, Rin gasped at how agonizing it was standing _here_, in front of his name.

How could Kakashi stand it?

"Why are we here?" She breathed.

Beside her, Kakashi shrugged. "You need this."

She wanted to rebuff his declaration – how did she need this pain? – but kept silence, unable to say another word as her eyes scanned the names against her will. Various ninja whom she never knew flashed before her eyes; the _missing-in-action_ slab was nearly crowded with names.

"Right there," he pointed to a tombstone with fresh flowers perched at the bottom. "That's where his name is."

Her eyes followed his gaze, landing on the kanatana engraved in the stone. She swallowed thickly when his name finally appeared.

"Uchiha, Obito…" Kakashi whispered from her side, breaking the unspoken taboo his name brought. "It's kind of impersonal, no? His name surrounded by other ninja…"

"H-he would want t-that, though," she says, blinking back a frenzy of tears that threaten to spill over. "Being surrounded by all his comrades and p-people who gave their lives for the sake of the village," with the sudden courage, and the weight diminishing when Kakashi said his name, she swallows thickly and continues. "O-Obito-kun would really like that."

Kakashi draped a loose arm around her shoulder, tugging her close to his chest. "He would."

"I-I'm going to miss him so much, Kakashi-kun," she admitted softly, more to herself than the silver-haired boy beside her.

The pain didn't go away because she said his name; it was still lingering, feeling fresh and new like always, but somehow it was a little easier to handle. She didn't want to curl up and run away, instead she wanted to stand here, with Kakashi by her side, and remember Obito for all the good times they had and not his last moments alive.

"Do you blame me?" She heard the unmistakable self-loathing in his voice, and it tore through her already sore heart. "Tell me the truth, Rin – do you hate me because he – he…_died_?"

"Never," she whispered forcefully, bring her hands up to grasp the side of his face. The fabric under his eyes felt wet, and his one visible eye was bloodshot, but she didn't comment on it. "I don't blame you at all, Kakashi-kun. It was an accident that neither of us could've prevented."

His head dropped, unable to look at the sincerity in her gaze. "Rin…he loved you."

Her breath caught in her throat at his softly spoken words, hissed so quietly she could almost missed them. The guilt lacing his words caused her as much pain as the silent confession had. Obito loved her. Rin didn't want to admit it to herself - not until all the pain was gone and the sorrow didn't weight so heavily on her shoulders.

"I-I know…"

Kakashi grasped her shoulders in his hands, glancing up intensely at her. "Do you hate me now?"

"I-I," she began, pausing to wipe the tear that clung to Kakashi's eye lash. "I don't have you. I-I love – loved – Obito, too, and he'll always be in my heart, just as you will."

The honesty of her belated confession was surprising to both of them. Rin knew she loved him as a teammate and a friend (but then, why did her heart swell painfully when she thought of him now, in a romantic sense?), but was unwilling to touch upon those buried emotions just yet.

"Rin…" He muttered, returning her gesture and wiping the years that ran freely down her cheeks. "Thank you."

Straightening, he turned to stand beside her, wrapping a secure arm around her shoulder. They stood at the tombstone, staring at Obito's name etched in the marble stone, standing side-by-side, using each other as a support.

"I'm going to be more like him," he promised, breaking the easy silence between them. His words sounded sincere, a determined edge seeping into his tone. "I'm not going to be trash."

Rin glanced at him, letting a small smile dance across her face, the first in what seemed like the longest time. "You never were."

It still hurt – the crushing weight of her loss, the unexpected emotions that he dug up inside of her – wouldn't go away anytime soon. Both she and Kakashi's knew this, and were ready for the up and downs they would undoubtedly endure during the grieving process that was sure to come. But they had each other, and the fond memories of Obito to ground them and give them something to laugh and reminisce about when things got too hard.

Rin was unready to completely admit that Obito was gone, but that didn't mean he was entirely vanished from her life.

She loved him and would keep him in her heart until the day she died.

(The only regret she had was not realizing how much he meant to her until he was gone.)

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**note3: **i've never seen so many clichés in my life. =O sorry for the angst, but it i really wanted to write a prompt like this.  
**note4****:** i had no idea that today was Halloween – so, happy Halloween! i think i'm going to borrow my brother's tux and go as Psy. ^^ please review.


	9. stain

**under the same sun**

**[stains]  
****summary:** it didn't get any easier, it just became routine  
**rating: **T  
**characters: **Obito, Rin  
**note1:** this was supposed to be up on Friday, but i had too much homework and an online course to finish - sorry! i originally wanted to do something light and fluffy to make up for all the angst in the last chapter, but i wanted to finish this prompt and there wasn't much i could do with it to make it all romantic and sappy.**  
****note2: **the next prompt _will_ (and this is a promise) have much more romance in it. =)

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She knows something is amiss when Obito abruptly brushes, rushing into the small motel room they're staying at for the duration of their mission, and locks himself inside the washroom, refusing to open the door. He doesn't answer when she knocks on it repeatedly, only offering a choked _I'm fine_, before the sound of running water drowns the rest out.

Rin doesn't stop her, and worriedly calls out his name until he finally relents and lets the door openly slight ajar. The scent of disinfectant clings to him when he peers out; his eyes rimmed red and bloodshot, and his voice thick from tears he's undoubtedly shed.

"Are you okay, Obito-san?"

The despondency on his face makes her worry even more. All traces of his usual exuberance is gone, replaced with a hallow look in his eyes and an empty chill to his voice. "I'm fine."

Only, she knows he's not. His forced attempt at smiling makes her heart ache painfully in her chest.

Nudging her foot into the little opening, she doesn't give him the chance to close the door, putting up that barrier between them again. Forcing her way into the washroom, the first thing she notices is the pinkish stains marking the white porcelain of the sink, the second is his hands, scrubbed raw with the washcloth sitting in the middle of the sink, and the small piece of soap, turned a grotesque red color. When she quickly assesses him for any external cuts or injuries, she finds none, and it all clicks into place.

The blood isn't his.

"O-Obito-san," she whispers, her chest restricting achingly at the agonized look in his eyes.

"I-I killed them, Rin…I-I…"

Rin immediately pulls him close, tucking his head into the crook of her neck, and holding him tight against her chest. His knees buckle, and she slowly kneels down on the ground, pushing herself against the wall, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and whispering gentle words to soothe him.

He brokenly sobs into her ear about the man he's killed – the life he selfishly took – and the nonexistent blood staining his hands that won't come off, no matter how hard he washes them.

* * *

"I'm sorry," he whispers again that night (was it the thirteenth or the thirtieth time in the last two months?), nestled under the crook of her arm, refusing to meet her gaze. "I-I'm so weak, I know, but…"

"Don't, Obito-san," she says, hugging him closer.

They lay in silence, staring up at the ceiling. The only sound that breaks through the quiet between them was the harsh flow of water trickling out of the tap. It's not a safe haven – the strong smell of disinfectant and the sight of the yellowing tiles are not welcoming or comforting in the slightest – but they both find themselves in the same spot every time.

She's too impervious to it all too really feel anything about it now. Obito doesn't talk about it once the smile in on his face and he's that exhaustive ball of energy again. Sometimes she wants him to crack and tell her things; what he's feeling, what happened, and why he tries to cover it up, but still cries on her shoulder. It's tiring and she hates how easily it fits into her daily routine, but there's nothing she can do about it.

"You're not weak," she mutters, edging her words in quickly before he regained control of himself and covered it up with faux grins in a futile attempt to placate her.

"You probably think I'm a cry-baby." He wipes his hand across his face, sniffling quietly to himself. "Or a monster."

She turns her head, forcing him to look at her. "I'd never think you were a monster, Obito-san-"

"Yeah, right," he cuts in, breaking away from her embrace. "I-I _killed_ people, Rin-chan…Innocent people who didn't deserve it, all because someone _told_ me to."

Rin grabs his shoulders, twisting around to face him fully. His eyes are wide when her hand moves up and taps him lightly on the cheek. It's not a slap – it doesn't even hurt – but the simple act and suddenness of it all makes him stop and stare wordless at her.

"If you didn't come to me crying every time you killed someone, Obito-san, then I'd really think you were a monster." She rubs her fingers against the clammy spot on his cheek where she tapped him, trying to convey what she was feeling. "If you didn't feel such remorse for you actions, then I'd think you were a monster. But because you cry for every life you take, it makes you a stronger person, Obito-san."

"R-Rin-chan…"

"Don't ever call yourself weak or a monster again, do you hear me? Only a _monster_ would ignore the regret of his actions and not feel anything for them. A truly weak person would ignore it."

He pulls her in close, hugging her tightly to his chest. "I-I'm sorry, Rin-chan."

"There's nothing to be sorry about…"

They sit on the washroom floor, saying nothing and mulling over the words that were said. She wishes she could take the pain away, but there was nothing she could do except hold him and comfort him when he needed it.

"Thank you, Rin-chan," he's smiling again, and stands up, offering her a hand.

It's become a twisted ritual between them: Obito would lock himself up, scrubbing his hands raw until they bled, and she would find him, and they would sit together for hours, saying nothing until the last sniffle came out and he was grinning again. She hates it so much, hates how broken he looks after every mission he goes on, and it breaks her to watch the immunity to it all build up over time.

Rin's not oblivious to the hardships of being a ninja. Killing wasn't optional, it was a necessity. She hated seeing the way Obito suffered for these testaments; his shoulders would slump, his eyes would fill with tears, and the heaving sobs wrenched her heart every time. It never got any easier – it only became routine.

"Anytime," she whispers, closing the washroom door behind them. Just like that, they're both back to being Rin and Obito; all traces that this ever happened was washed down the drain and locked away with the dull sounding thud the door makes when the hinges catch on the handle. "Let's go get something to eat, okay?"

The wooden door acts as a barrier between them; an impenetrable object that doesn't linger in their regular life until it's once again opened, and she finds herself huddled on the floor, holding Obito as he sobbed over the lives he'd taken. Sometimes she thankful that it's in place, unopened and keeping everything neatly separated.

Other times, she wishes it never existed.

"Can we get ramen, Rin-chan?" He asks, tugging her out the door.

She smiles, and nods. "Whatever you want, Obito-san."

"Awesome!"

The only proof that any of this ever happened are their bloodshot eyes, Obito's raw hands, and the pinkish streaks staining the white porcelain skin that never seem to come off, no matter how hard they scrub.

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**note3: **it may seem as though the subject of killing is barely touched upon, but i though subtlety would work better than graphic depiction. **  
****note4: **i hope you enjoyed it! (=


	10. expectations

**under the same sun**

**[expectations]  
****summary:** that one time Obito asked Rin out – and she said _yes_.  
**rating: **T  
**characters: **Obito, Rin  
**honorable mentions: **Kakashi, Minato  
**note1: **so. i just read the latest Naruto chapter. still nothing on _WHY_ Kakashi would kill Rin. i can't help picturing Kishi with a giant trollface saying, _you mad, fans_? yes. yes i am.  
**note2: **this is a little late, but...it's really long. and _FLUFFY! _

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One minute she was completely immersed in the latest medical text, reading about horrible symptoms of gangrene, and the next –

"W-will you go out with me, Rin-chan?"

–Obito was standing in front of her, hands clenched to his sides in shaking fists, and a decidedly hopeful look in his wide, onyx eyes, hidden behind his orange tinted goggles.

"O-Obito-san?" She mutters, blinking.

She should be used to this by now. It was almost a daily routine how many times he would ask her out. She would answer with a polite, "not today, Obito-san."

He would sulk for a while over the inevitable rejection until something else caught his attention. Usually it was something Kakashi said or Minato did. Everything would be back to normal the next day; she would be busy reading (or trying to placate the tension between her two teammates); Obito would be late (or scowling at Kakashi); the silver-haired boy in question would be showing his superior skills (or mocking Obito) and Minato would be directing them (or breaking up a fight between Obito and Minato).

Only, he wasn't moving.

"Rin-chan, please," he urged, pouting petulantly. "Just one date."

His sudden brazen approach to asking her out startles her, because really –

-This was Obito Uchiha-

-since when was he so…forward?

Rin drops her book in shock. "O-Obito-san…?"

"Just," he pleads, looking subtly chastised with his actions. "Give me one – _just _one – chance, and if it doesn't work out, I'll leave you alone. Okay?"

Didn't she always preach about giving chances and not judging someone based on appearance? Yes, but – this was _Obito Uchiha_; her friend, companion, and teammate. Any feelings she had for him were completely platonic and purely friend-related. She knew he liked her – if asking her out numerous times weren't enough of a hint, she didn't know what else was – but didn't – _couldn't_ – return those same sentiments.

"Ah, Obito-san…" She scratches her cheek. He stands his ground. "Um…_one_ date you say, and then you will stop asking me?"

He nods. It's a little comforting to know that she won't have to go home with that clinging weight of guilt on her shoulders with each dejected look he gives her when she says no.

Would it really be such a big deal?

A dinner between two _friends_, that's all.

It might give her a chance to make her feelings abundantly clear.

Without, you know, hurting him in the process.

(She's probably going to regret this.)

"Okay," she picks up the fallen book, suddenly less interested in reading about _wet_ and _dry_ gangrene as she was before. "I'll go on a date with you – but just _one_."

He doesn't hear her because he's too busy whooping happily, and promising, "you won't regret this, Rin-chan; it'll be the _best_ date you've ever been on!"

(She's already beginning to.)

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He came to her door two hours late ("there was this old woman who needed help…"), but it didn't matter. She didn't get ready until the time he was supposed to show up, anyway. Not because she didn't want to go, because she _knows_ him.

He stood outside her apartment door, face blushed a brilliant red color and trembling from nerves.

Rin doesn't notice this. The only thing she's focused on is the absence of his goggles, and how _neat_ his hair looks. His trousers are a simple black pair she's seen him wear around the village on their days off, but his shirt is rather… _formal_. It's a black, button-up dress shirt rolled up to his elbows. She's never seen him wear it before.

He…looks good.

(But that can't be right because this is _only_ Obito Uchiha – her _friend._)

"A-ah," he sputtered. "Y-you look, u-um, _b-beautiful_…"

Her heart stalls in her chest. Why did that one comment make her feel so…hot? Embarrassed, she waved him off with a little chuckle, and grabs her bag.

It's not like she dressed up for this.

(Only, you know, she kind of did.)

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It's not so bad – once she got past the awkwardness of being on an actual date with _her best friend _that is.

They're at a sushi bar that's she never heard of, eating food that seems much too expensive, but she's _kindofsortofmaybe_ having fun.

"Ah, Rin-chan," he says, dipping his _maki_ in _shoyu_. "You should try some _nigiri_. Here."

It's kind of sad of admit, but she's never really tried sushi before. Obito ordered for her, citing that this was one of his favorite restaurants to eat at. He picked out several large platters of food; large rolls of _maki sushi _called _futomaki_, _nigiri_ (which he insists tastes the best), and _onigiri_.

So far, her favorite is the _onigiri_, but the rest taste good, as well.

"Mm," she hums, chewing on the piece of sushi.

"I knew you'd like it," he turns his attention to the set of dangos (a rather unusual addition to their meal, but he somehow managed to convince the waitress that, _yes_, dangos were a perfectly acceptable meal choice to go with sushi). "Dangos and sushi are the best, eh?"

She can only nod and smile.

The date is going well – much better than she expected. If she forgot that they were even on one, it could easily pass as one of their post-mission meals. Except, you know, this is much fancier than cheap ramen.

(And she won't do that to Obito; she agreed to a _date_, not a friendly outing.)

She plucks a pink _hanami dango_ ball from the platter and plops it in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

It's strange for her to be feeling so…_unsure _about Obito when that's usually reserved for Kakashi.

No. _No_. She won't go there.

Rin will _not _think about Kakashi Hakate on a date with Obito. It's completely unfair to him.

…And she's a little embarrassed (and slightly confused) to admit that she wasn't thinking of him _at all_ during her dinner with Obito. Her silver haired teammate barely came to her mind. Odd. Really, really _odd_. She doesn't dwell on it though (but secretly blames it on the deliciousness of the food.)

"I'm really glad you finally agreed to go on a date with me, Rin-chan."

Damn.

Why does he have to look so _sincere_ when he speaks to her?

"Yeah," she says evasively. "Are you going to eat the other dango?"

"No," he smiles, nudging it with his chop sticks. "You can have it."

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They wander aimlessly through the village, not saying a word.

Rin is still a little embarrassed over dinner. Typically, on a date the male counterpart was supposed to pay, but she didn't expect the bill to be so expensive. When she offered to pay half the bill, the sudden look in Obito's eyes made her blush unashamedly at the intensity swimming behind his onyx eyes.

("Don't worry, Rin-chan," he says, easily tossing out a few bills on the table. "I've got it.")

It's really stupid when she thinks about it. So he paid for dinner, that didn't mean she had to get all flustered about it. But the act, the simple gesture made her acutely more aware of how much this date means to him. He was willing to pay when he normally tried to push the bill on someone else. It was…_heavy_.

It made her feel heavy.

With guilt.

With flattery.

She didn't know.

Since when did being with Obito make her feel so…confused?

"I, uh," he scratches his head, pointedly avoiding her gaze. "Do you want to walk by the, um, river with me? I know it's kind of late, but…"

"Obito-san, this is your date, isn't it?" The look of surprise on his face makes her smile. "So. It's not over, I hope."

He grins, holding his hand out for her to take. "Of course not, Rin-chan!"

Shyly, she slips her hand into his.

(She _kindofsortof_ doesn't want the night to end, either.)

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They wander aimlessly through the village, in no real rush to go anywhere.

Somewhere between _Ichiraku Ramen_ and the lake, their hands stopped bumping into each other's and finally joined together. The warm from his hand, laced through each of her fingers and drawing little circles on her wrist with his thumb, caused a pleasant tingle to grow in the pit of her stomach.

_Butterflies. _

She was nervous.

Obito Uchiha made her _nervous._

Someone somewhere is probably laughing, she thinks with a little, hesitant smile dancing on the corners of her lips. He's… not the first choice she would have picked to spontaneously get a crush on. Obito's sweet; he kind and considerate, and he's so dependable, but she never really saw him as a potential _crush_.

They were friends.

Holding his hand, dreading the moment when they would eventually stumble across her apartment complex or the night would come to a close, it didn't feel anything like the sworn label _just friends _entailed. It felt…

_Right._

Comfortable.

Safe.

She likes it – a _lot. _

(Maybe a little too much, but she doesn't dwell on it; she has time to mull these developments over.)

"Ah…" He muttered.

She glances at his dejected face, blinking, and follows his gaze.

It was her street.

"Oh."

She wants to steer him in the opposite direction and start their walk from the beginning. And once they get to her street once more, she wants to repeat the process again and again until she's had her fill of this date.

Obito continues to walk toward her apartment, and she dutifully follows. They have to get up early tomorrow anyway; Obito has AM practice and Rin has an early shift at the hospital.

"I had fun, Rin-chan," he looks at her shyly.

She nods, and smiles. "Me too, Obito-kun," his eyes light up at the honorific added to his name - a new development instead of the usual _san_. "I'm glad I agreed to go with you."

…Since when did she become so corny?

His smile is practically beaming as they stand outside her apartment.

She thinks about inviting him in for tea, but she doesn't have any left.

Dragging the keys from out of her bag, she slowly inserts them inside the lock and twists.

"U-um, I know I said only one date…but, i-if you had fun maybe we can…"

She cuts him off with a brazen kiss to his cheek that turns a burning scarlet under her lips. The warm of his flesh makes her heart flutter.

"Pick me up at seven tomorrow," she says, opening the door.

His eyes are impossibly wide and she giggles at the star-struck expression on his face. "I-I will, R-Rin-chan!"

When he finally leaves, she shuts the door and leans on with a wistful sigh. She drops her head into her hands and starts to laugh quietly to herself. The butterflies in her stomach refuse to settle down, squirming around in earnest now. Her face is almost as red as his was when she thinks about their date.

"Obito-kun," she hums to herself, unable to keep the smile off her face (or her heart from somersaulting in her chest).

That one time he asks her out, and she said yes turned out to be better than expected – _much_ better, actually.

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**note3: **next update will be either on Tuesday or on Wednesday. **  
****note4:** please review. =)


	11. ghost

**under the same sun**

**[ghost]  
****summary:** he was nothing but a phantom reminder of what she lost, but for some reason, she couldn't let him go.  
**rating: **T+  
**characters: **Obito/Tobi, Rin  
**honorable mentions: **Kakashi, Minato  
**note1: **_yo dawg, i heard you like drabbles so i put drabbles inside your drabble _(for those who don't know the internet: this is a drabble consisting of drabbles. drabbleception.).  
**note2: **_remember:_ this is an **AU** (capitalized and bolded – for those who skip notes). i know that Obito never met Rin as Tobi/Madara, but for this prompt to work, i had to take some liberties. it's also a Tobi/Rin drabble. yeah, i went there.

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"You're waiting for me."

It wasn't a question – he was merely stating a fact; a true, embarrassing piece of information that makes her want to cringe away in shame. She didn't even know his name – only the alias' he gave her that always changed – but still waited patiently for him to show up.

Like a..._puppy._

Once a week, he would be there, sitting by the pond where they first met. Sometimes he'd bring dangos, other times he'd bring a bloodied weapon or an injury for her to heal. He never asked her to fix his wound (or gave her a reason for why the weapons were stained with blood that wasn't his), he just sat there until she slowly inched closer and started patching him up.

("You need to stop getting hurt so much," she would reprimand.

"Hn," he would nod sarcastically. "I'll _try_.")

He was…an enigma that she couldn't figure out. One onyx eye could be seen from the swirled orange mask he wore, covering his face from her peering curiosity. When she asked about the mask, he would only say: "_Man is least himself when he talks to his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth_.*"

It was hard for her to decipher his cryptic words. He hinted sometimes on them being previously acquainted, but would then quickly change the topic, ignoring her pleas to elaborate. The man was subtle in his grace; he moved silently, almost obscured, and deadly.

There was so much (and really nothing) to be afraid of when it came to him.

She didn't know where she stood, only that he hadn't killed her – _yet_ – so she must have done something right.

…_Right_?

Rin wasn't sure anymore.

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The first time they met, she was sitting by the pond near the abandoned Uchiha estate, gazing blankly at the moon hanging in the azure sky, alone and silent. His presence was completely unknown to her – though, inexplicably, it was bordering on the edge of not-quite familiar, but not necessarily foreign – until he shifted.

It was only the slight movement that caught her attention.

Startled, Rin tensed, waiting for the attack –

– _gripping a kunai under the long sleeve of her shirt tightly in her fist_ –

– that never came.

Tense, she sat, waiting for him to make a move. He ignored her entirely, one leg prompted up with his chin resting on his forearm. The other slung loosely around his shin. Dressed in all black – black trousers, black sandals, and black cloak – he looked intimidating, _dangerous_.

And she was scared.

She tried to avoid danger for the most part. Nothing good came from actively seeking it out. Even though common sense and logic told her to run - run far away and never look back - she chose to stay.

Neither of them filled in the gaping quiet settled around them that was broken only by the soft sounds of the night-life.

Rin was slightly worried about saying something and breaking the peace that lingered between them. What if she said something and it snapped him out of whatever trance he was momentarily caught in? Maybe he knew someone of the Uchiha household and wanted to pay his respects.

(Or maybe, like her, he was unable to let some_one_ go just yet.)

Whatever the reason, he stayed with her until the early hours of the morning. The only inclination he gave to acknowledge her existence with a single tilt of his head in her direction before he was gone, leaving nothing but a vague impression of fear on her and memory of a man shrouded in mystery and dressed in all black.

With a sigh, Rin stood up, casting out last look to the old Uchiha manor, and resumed her daily duties as though nothing unusual happened.

She doubted the stranger would be back again.

(A small part of her hoped he would; the momentary relief of loneliness that crept up on her throughout the years was temporarily stated in his presence, if only for a few hours.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

He didn't return until two weeks later.

That was the first night he showed up in tatters, blood seeping through the cuts on his arms and legs.

"I-I can…heal you," she whispered tentatively. "I'm a…a medic."

He hesitated.

Then slowly, he nodded.

After several minutes without making any move toward her, she cautiously inched forward, gripping a small kunai for comfort. She reached out and grasped his arm gently, careful not to disturb any of his wounds. It was a mess of blood soaked scraps of his cloak and undershirt, and she worked quickly to peel the tattered remains of fabric from the gashes on his arms.

Seeing the lacerations made her flinch.

It was deep and would definitely need stitches.

It took longer to heal and regenerate skin than it did to stitch it and let it heal on its own. She doubted that she had enough chakra to take care of all the minor – let alone major – cuts. Grabbing her medic bag she carried around with her, she rifled through the contents until she found a needle and thread, and some gauze.

"This might hurt," she says, dabbing rubbing alcohol on the wounds to clear away the blood.

He doesn't even flinch as the liquid is poured on his injuries. Stoically, he sits with his head facing away from her. Undaunted by the lack of response, she continues. In and out, she watches the black thread slip through his skin like paper and come out on the other side, making neat, precise lines that bind the separated skin together.

When all the wounds are tightly bound in gauze and the bleeding has stopped, she leans back and wipes the beads of sweat from her forehead.

"There," Rin says, exhaustion weight her down. "Good as new."

He hummed in response.

"How did…" She swallowed thickly when his unmasked eye shot to her face. "H-how did you get those wounds?"

He stands, ignoring her question, and turns to leave.

An apology is forming on her lips, but she clamps her mouth shut. Why should she apology to someone she doesn't even know? Rin keeps quiet and looks away.

"Let's just say," the sarcasm in his voice is thick, and she winces at his tone. "There was this lady and her purse."

And then he's gone, leaving nothing but tattered remains of bloodied scraps of fabric.

(His words, for some reason, haunt her for the next two weeks, sounding almost…nostalgic.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Sometimes he would come to her with blood spattered on the front of his cloak, the rusty color seeping into the black, staining it grotesquely. Gasping at the sight of so much blood, her medical intuition takes over and she's checking him over before she really knows what she's doing.

His deep chuckle and the absence of any wounds make realization dawn on her heavily.

"Scared?" He mocks, resting his elbow on the knee of his crossed legs. He cocks his head at her, his fist folded under his chin, silently daring her to do something, anything.

Swallowing down a bitter taste in her throat, she hesitates. "I…"

She wasn't scared.

Rin was terrified.

That much blood soaking through his clothes would mean that whomever he killed was…dead, maimed…_slaughtered. _

The intensity in his onyx eye only fuels the terror raging inside. "Yes," she rasps, drawing her knees to her chest and pushing her head down. "I'm…_scared_."

She waited for the inevitable to happen. He was going to finish her off. Why else would he have shown her the surplus amount of blood from whomever he killed? It was a warning – an example of what was going to happen to her next. Soon, she would the nameless blood staining his clothes for someone else to ask about.

Moments passed, but she was too afraid to look up.

A heavy object landed on her head –

– and she yelped embarrassingly –

– but nothing happened.

Blinking, she peeked out from the save haven of her arms. He was sitting beside her, looking at the estate –

– with his…_hand_ on her head.

"Um," she whispered. "Aren't you going to kill me?"

His head snapped in her direction the moment she uttered the words. The intensity in his visible eye slightly unnerved her.

"…Never."

(And against all logic, she believed him.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

"…His name was Obito Uchiha," she doesn't know why she's telling him this.

It's such a sensitive subject for her. The mere thought of reliving the traumatic happenstance makes her want to curl into a ball and weep. Nobody knew about this – not even her own teammates – and she kept the feelings, the lingering grief, all tightly wrapped up inside of her.

Why was she telling some strange man who didn't even trust her enough to divulge his own name? She only knew him for a mere month, and yet she was willing to share her pain, her memories, of her best friend who perished five years ago. It made no sense.

She should stop.

Take back what she'd said and pretend that his name never came up.

"He was my best friend."

The words poured out without restraint, as though they _wanted_ to be said.

"He was so weak," she laughs humorlessly, dropping her gaze to a crack in the ground. "But, at the same time, he was the _strongest _person I knew."

Obito was so _painful_ to talk about. He became a taboo to her teammates; they didn't mention his name without forlorn sighs and choked emotions. His presence with them was so sudden, ending before it had time to progress.

She missed him – a _lot_.

For five years she let the guilt, the regret, suffocate her. It…feels good to tell someone.

"I miss him so much," she sobbing now, openly and unashamed.

He doesn't offer her any comfort or say pretty words to make the ache go away. He sits quietly, dropping his hand on her head, and _listens_.

Rin talk through the night about _Obito_.

Like that time he sprained his wrist and made her sign his cast.

Or that time he came to practice, battered and bruised and claiming an old lady with a bag had beat him up.

And those smiles, that laugh, his dreams (however outrageous they were), his aspirations, his hopes, his ideologies, his idiosyncrasies. They all spill from her lips, leaving her laughing and sobbing.

It _hurts_, but at the same time, she feels so much _better_.

At the end of her reminiscing tirade (she leans against his shoulder, eyes fluttered closed from exhaustion), he let's out a deep breath and slowly shakes his head.

"This…Obito Uchiha," he mutters. The words slightly muffled and hazy as she wearily blinks in and out of unconsciousness, but his voice, the subdued tone makes her want to listen. "He sounds like a…"

"-good ninja…" she finishes for him with a sleepy smile. "And my best friend."

"…_Hm_."

(When she wakes up the next morning, she's in her bed with no recollection how she got there.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

It was stupid to feel so safe being near him.

(But she did.)

He'd made it abundantly clear that he was stronger than her. With minimal effort, all he had to do was concentrate just a _little_ chakra into his fist, and she would be dead. Her life would end at his hands, like many before her. It wouldn't even _matter_ to him. Her life was so expendable.

She shouldn't trust him.

(But she does.)

It's maddening how _confused _he makes her.

Sometimes, she thinks that he might _hate_ her – the sidelong glances nearly scorched the exposed skin he looks at, igniting her with a fearful burn and an ache that starts when his gaze lingers.

His gaze captivates her. She can't move, can't speak. Running away or screaming for help was never an option when he looks at her like _that_. All coherent thoughts rush out of her mind. Then, his gaze flickers away and the spell is broken.

She's left sitting there, trembling and feeling caught between hot and cold.

(Why does his looks do this to her?)

Sometimes, she thinks that he wants to _hold_ her – the subtle shifts in his posture as he changes his stance, edging closer to her until their legs or arms touch. It sends a jolt – much like the clichéd _electricity_ feeling that other girls talk about when referring to their boyfriends, only this doesn't feel very pleasant – through her. He moves away a minute later after they make contact. He must feel that same electrical charge, too, because sometimes his touches linger a second too long.

(It feels like she's on fire, but there's a catch: the fire burns are like magma and solid ice on her skin.)

His voice – the deep, husky rasp that makes her knees quake when he speaks – is what really gets to her. It's so…_enchanting. _Even speaking in whispers, he commands attention; or when his voice catches that childish lit to it, the playful taunt that lures people into a false sense of security around him that is ultimately their downfall.

It was incredibly stupid to feel safe around him.

The sound of her name falling from his lips sounds so enticing and _right_. Its familiar – like this wasn't the first time he'd ever said her name. He says it with such familiarity and affection that she blushes. The only thing that's missing when he said her name is the "-chan" suffix at the end and the way he said her name would sound almost identical to her onyx haired friend.

(Really, it's strange, but she doesn't ponder too much over it.)

He's an enigma she can't work though.

Sometimes, she wants to run from him; other times she wants to run _to_ him.

(Whatever it was, she looks forward to their little rendezvous each week – mostly because there isn't much else to do, but mainly because she's a little lonely.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Her mind keeps drawing these strange conclusions every time he says or does something.

But…most of them are completely ridiculous.

…There was _no way_ any of them could be true.

(At least, she hopes not.)

She was just chasing a ghost. It was a phantom figment of her overactive imagination gone awry with her delirious _hopes _and idle fantasies.

Besides, there was nothing even remotely similar between the two. The only common ground they shared was the color of their eye(s) – but Kakashi had almost the same shade, only a little lighter – and _her_. If he was truly…_him_, then everything that happened would be too out of character. It was a stupid notion.

Obito would never do _half_ the things that _Tobi/Madara/Nobody_ does.

It wasn't like him.

Obito was soft and meek, and generous and loving. Actively, he always sought out the best in things and (especially) people. Killing mindlessly would have _terrified_ him.

Tobi was arrogant and sarcastic; he killed remorselessly with no regard for anyone. He looked out for himself and his goals only. Everyone else was merely a pawn to be used.

Put them both in the same room as each other and it would have been chaos.

There was one major flaw in her assumptions, too. An obvious roadblock for her crazy conspiracies in the form of the bolder that crushed Obito – a turnpike in her life that she was present for – killing him. She was there. Rin performed the operation to give Kakashi his eye.

(It was just a minor coincidence that the only visible eye was in direction correlation to the one that would have remained.)

She was overacting.

He was _not _Obito Uchiha.

The notion was heinous and fictitious.

(At the same time, she kind of wished that her baseless guessing was somehow true.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

_You've been waiting for me_, he'd say.

His arms would be folded across his chest and he would stand over her, towering like a looming skyscraper. Imposing. Invincible. _Deadly_. She could hear the smirk in his voice without having to see it for herself.

_No_, she would answer back. _Don't be so full of yourself._

Crouching low, he would stare at her for a minute. Sometimes it looked as though he was shocked to see her, other times it like he wanted to wrap her up tightly and take her with him, keeping her by his side forever.

_Shiver_. It's just cold out today. It has nothing to do with _him_.

When she would look away shyly, he would huff and sit cross-legged beside her. They would stare at everything and say nothing.

Rin would ponder over his words, analyzing them to the last comma.

Was she waiting for him?

This mysterious stranger who managed to throw her for a loop without saying a word? Who actively aggravated her with his self-righteous words? Why would she be waiting for someone like him?

Someone who killed.

Someone who _conquered_.

He was still, if not only, a man.

And maybe, like her, he was just a little lonely too.

She glanced at him, then to the gloved hand that lingered next to her own.

"…Maybe." Rin reached out and grasped his hand. The warm of his palm seeping through the spandex material and heating her skin made her blush and look away pointedly when he tilted his head toward her. "I-I'm not sure who I'm waiting for anymore…"

His long fingers wrapped around and consumed her small hand. Pale ivory on starchy black. "…Neither am I."

.

.

.

.

The day she slips and calls him Obito is that last time she ever sees him again.

It was harmless, really – a slip of the tongue.

An accident.

(…But it wasn't, not really.)

"…Obito?" He echoes her words, tensing beside her. "Why do you say that?"

She swallows a few times. "I…It was an accident…"

"Was it really?"

"…Yes." _No_.

He doesn't say anything for a while, just sits there with his fists clenched at his sides.

It's too quiet. "Are you him? Are you…_Obito_?" Rin's heart it pounding loudly in her chest, painfully squeezing.

She doesn't want him to say anything.

_Forget it_, she wants to scream. _Don't answer_.

But it feels like bees have crawled down her throat and sung her tongue. It's swollen and she can't open her mouth to say anything. The words are ringing loudly in her head, but have no escape route. They're trapped.

The silence falls heavily between them like an anchor.

Finally, after a minute, he stands. His head his downcast, refusing to meet her gaze, and he shifts from one foot to the other. She wants to cry and laugh and scream at the same time.

"…Can you handle the answer?"

_Yes. No. Maybe._ Rin isn't sure anymore.

When she looks up - just as quietly as he came - he was gone.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Meeting a ghost was pretty anticlimactic.

She expected some tale of grandeur, completely with a thunderstorm and fog.

Instead all she got was an imposture masquerading as a dead-man.

Sometimes she thinks she can see him – on missions, that strange man who sits in the background of the bar, shrouded in dim lighting, looks suspiciously like _Tobi_, but when she looks again, he's gone; or when she finally goes home and wants nothing more than to curl up in bed and read until she passes out, the lingering scent of earthy musk hangs in the air, reminding her of his unique smell – a mix between freshly turned dirty and cut grass – but shakes those thoughts off before they can turn into a _real boy with black hair, dark eyes, pale skin, and a kind smile_.

She's delusional.

That's all.

Too many nights at the hospital, she chalks it up to, and writes herself a prescription for sleeping pills later in the evening. Some nights she wakes up and can't get rid of the feeling that someone was holding her during the night. The spot next to her in the bed was always warm.

It's her stray cat she picked up on a mission.

That's all.

In the rare moments of solidarity, Rin thinks she misses him.

She always misses Obito – _always._

But now, she kind of might miss _Tobi_, too.

Tobi – the stoic, imposing figure adorned in black who easily tramples over the delicacy and gentle quality of Obito with a smoldering air of arrogance. The masked stranger who quotes _Oscar Wilde_ and speaks in tongues of Spanish, German, French, English, Italian, and even the dead languages that no one thought to revive over the centuries.

_Him_.

She doesn't tell anybody any of this – not even Kakashi. Tucking it away into the confines of her mind, she blocks all sound, light and thoughts from entering. The only way in is through a series of quipped words and phrases that confuse and conquer, grasping whomever dares to tread through the thick waters by the shoulders and driving them away. It's kind of like a safe, she supposes.

Not even the infamous Yamanaka clan could get through her walls.

_I should be sorry to miss you._

She writes the words on a piece of paper and tucks it neatly under the pillow beside her own. If he has sneaked into her room at night and lying on her bed (she should feel irked that someone was invading her privacy, but she's more shocked that she hasn't noticed – and that he was able to get past all the protective seals Minato graciously put around her apartment), he would surely get the note.

When she sleeps, she dreams about Obito.

He's laughing with her, scowling at Kakashi, looking eagerly at Minato to learn a new technique.

Then he's lying under a rock. Blood – there is so much of it – pours from his wounds freely, drenching her knees and hands in the sticky red substance. She tries to say something – tell him not to worry, that everything's going to be all right – but nothing happens. She sits there helplessly and watches his eyes turn from black to grey.

"_Hello, Rin-chan_…" He whispers, slowly.

Tobi was standing in his place now, clutching her hands. "_Hello, Rin_."

"_Hello? Don't you mean 'Goodbye'?"_

Lines that look like a spider's web cut through the porcelain orange sharply, creating deep black lines.

The mask –

– _crack_ –

-shatters into a million tiny pieces.

The left side beaks off first, dissolving into shards of blood and ink.

It's…

She can't see. Everything is hazy.

Something drops at her feet, echoing hollowly. Looking down, she sees –

- the mask, lying on the ground by her feet.

Rin opens her mouth to say something but then -

"Goodbye, Rin."

- She's in her bed, panting and clutching her chest.

Her eyes dart wildly around the room. He was _here_; she can feel him still.

"O…Tobi…?"

Fumbling and shaking, her hands dive under the pillow beside her, and her fist closes around a piece of paper. Dragging it from the cocoon in her sheets, she pulls it to her chest and opens the crumpled paper. There's a messy scrawl underneath her neat writing. The words make her heart stop before beating erratically.

_If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life._

And she cries because she _knows_.

"Goodbye, Obito."

In the silence of the room, an echo whispers softly: "_goodbye, Rin._"

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**note3: **pretty ambiguous ending, there. not to mention it's super long. i'm actually really happy with this; i tried a new style of writing, so hopefully it all turns out okay. i was listening to the album, _Oshin_ by DIIV. it is the perfect soundtrack for November, 'nuff said.  
**note4:** sorry for being lame with the updates, but procrastination was all like, _oh, are you trying to work? LOL, not today, brah._ thanks for all the wonderful reviews! i really didn't expect this collection – that's what a book of drabbles and one shots are called, right? – to get more than ten! =) you all are special unicorns for reviewing. =)

_reference: _

_- _"_Man is least himself when he talks to his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth_." – Oscar Wilde;  
- _I should be sorry to miss you. _– I'm pretty sure this, too, is Oscar Wilde (correct me if i'm wrong.);  
- _If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life. _– Oscar Wilde


	12. fairytale

**under the same sun**

**[fairytale]  
****summary:** she thinks that Ondine must have cursed her too, because she's suddenly finding it hard to breath as Obito lies in a pool of his own blood.  
**characters: **Obito, Rin  
**honorable mentions: **Kakashi, Minato  
**note1:** _so._ it's been a while. ehehe. i wish i could say that i was slaving away on the computer, fussing over getting Rin and Obito to kiss - or get together - but that would be a lie. this was supposed to be my endgame of sorts, but after realizing that i've neglected to post something for a while, i decided to just throw it up. enjoy!**  
****note2: warning: **au, Rin-centric (kind of), and obscure references to mythology. particularly toward the fable of Ondine. look her story up - it's brilliant. also, CHEESE. and FLUFF (but just a little). and MAJOR CLICHES. like, everywhere. srsly.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

She thinks of _Ondine's Curse_.

If she lets her eyes close for one minute to rest, she'll die.

Rin is conscious of every breath that enters and exits her lungs.

_Deep breath in; deep breath out…_

"Deep breath in; deep breath out…" she mutters quietly, afraid to speak above a whisper.

He's like fragile glass that's already cracked. Any more pressure and he'll shatter into a million tiny pieces that she will never be able to repair. Gently – barely touching him – she cradles his head in her lap and works on the broken tissue and ruined bones.

She can fix him.

She _can_, she _will_, she _is._

Minato's hands rest on her shoulders. Solemnly, he conveys the words that no one can utter. It's impossible to save him, his actions echo in her head like a frostbite, nipping and scorching her skin. He won't make through the night.

Kakashi's weeping silently. How unfair was this? They just start to rest on the delicate balance of friendship and this happens to them. She wants to scream and cry, and go back and make everything _right_. They are not separate entities; they're a team. One half of the same whole. If one of them leaves, the rest will follow.

Obito is their orbit. Without him, they will all spiral out of control.

He's gravity.

He's the sun.

They _need_ him.

Chakra burns through her like lava, but she pours it into his wounds. She has to heal him from inside first. It's like a movie on rewind; the credits roll, the end is shown, and then the middle and the beginning, until finally the opening credits zoom across the screen. She watches in rapt concentration as his cells are repaired, tissue is restored, organs are patched up, bones are mended, muscle is reconstructed, and then fresh, pink skin, splintered with angry red lines, sews the body up, keeping everything tucked inside.

Her mind is on replay; over and over again, chunks information play like snippets behind her eyelids. She thinks of Obito, and the smell of medicine, and the taste of pills, and how to properly stop an infection from spreading. It's nonsensical, but it lets her relax and continue. It distracts her from the truth.

The thrumming of his head under her finger tips calms her, too. It's a constant that reminds her that everything is all right. That everything will be okay in the end. It _has _to. Things like this happen to other people; it's in cliché settings to induce sympathy from the viewers. There are no spectators around. She's not an actor. This can't happen in life.

The universe just doesn't work that way.

(Only, she knows it does, and it kills her.)

"Rin," the name sounds so broken when it passes through his lips. "How-how…"

"Fine," she answers. "He's going to be okay."

She's not sure who she's convincing anymore.

Minato's hands are still on her shoulders. He squeezes lightly before pulling away to join Kakashi and reinforcement team that showed up.

She ignores them all.

_Breathe in; breathe out…_

She's convinced she's been cursed by Ondine the moment Obito's lungs don't expand and his heart falters under her fingers. The mortal who turned the immortal into a mere human; she broke a promise by falling into another's arms and is paying for it now. Maybe there was some way to reverse it.

Rin bargains with everything she has. Her life, her eyes, her nose, her arms, her fingers, her heart, her torso, her legs, her feet, her toes, her sole, her talent – everything is offered to whomever is listening in exchange for a steady heart beat and lungs that work on their own.

Then she remembers that fickle dreams and fairytales are nothing but exploits of grandeur and faulty human-thinking. There has to be _something_ that can help her. Anything.

"Rin," there's a hand on her shoulder, pulling her away from the boy lying on the ground in a pool of his own blood. "You did the best you could…"

_Breathe in; breathe out…_

"No," she shakes the hand off her should roughly. "I'm not finished. I can do this – I can…"

"You need to calm down-"

"You don't understand! He's-he…He can't _die_! I won't let him…!"

He's breathing. His chest is moving – up, down, up, down – and his heart is beating. She can do this; she only need a little more time. If she had just a little bit more chakra left to give, she could – she could…

"I'm sorry, Rin."

There's a sharp pain in the back of her neck, like the bite of a mosquito or the sting of a bee, and then she's feeling woozy. Her vision swims, hazy before her. She gasps and tries to shake it off, but the pull to close her eyes, just rest for a minute, to –

- Obito's eye opens and he grins a little at her. "Thank you," he mumbles. -

- and everything goes black.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

She thinks of Ondine's mortal lover.

Maybe if he'd been faithful and stayed with her instead of seeking out another, younger woman, Ondine wouldn't be thrusting her hands inside Rin's chest and twisting her heart. She wouldn't be digging long talons into Rin's lungs, stopping her from taking a single breath.

It's his fault.

She gave up _everything _– her life, her immortality – to be with him, and because she aged, he went astray. It's not fair.

Ondine didn't do anything wrong – he was the cause. The stupid human who didn't like her appearance anymore and went to find a replacement; he said he'd love her until his last breath. If he'd kept his promise, Ondine wouldn't plague Rin so much. She would be with her loving husband and their child.

This is a fairytale, though.

Ondine isn't real.

She has to keep reminding herself of this each time she gasps awake, clutching her throat to see if she's still breathing. Nobody says anything to her when the nurses walk past her room. They give her a look – was it pity? Was it sorrow? – and continue on their way. She knows some of them, and calls out their name.

They just move quicker down the hall and leave her gentle plea hanging in the room.

They don't tell her anything about Obito.

He's a tightly kept secret between the walls.

Rin looks down at the clean – whitewhitewhite – floor and wonders if Obito is lying just below her in the morgue. Was his body lying prone on a table with a white sheet covering it? Did his parents come in to see him one last time? Was Kakashi waiting outside the door, thinking about what could've been? Was Minato at home with Kushina, mourning the loss of a teammate? Or was he filling out the paperwork about his death?

Where was he?

She puts her hand over her heart and pretends that their beats match. _Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump_.

So many regrets are splattered all over the walls, painted there for her to see when she opens her eyes. Maybe she should have given him a chance. What if he was the best thing that ever happened to her? She should've asked more about him. What was his favorite color? She didn't know nearly enough about him.

Why didn't she try to get to know him a little better?

The sedatives start to work, like liquid nirvana running through her veins, and she falls into a fitful sleep for the rest of the night.

Ondine and Obito haunt her in her dreams.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

"How is Obito?"

Silence.

Nobody moves.

They avoid her gaze, but she can see the tension in their shoulders.

"Rin, you should rest for a while," Minato's placing his hand on her shoulder, again. It's not comforting; it's scalding. "You've used a lot of chakra, and did the best you could."

"Was it enough?" She chokes on her words.

_Breathe in; breathe out…_

"Rin…"

_Breathe in; breathe out…_

"…Obito was crushed by a rock; it had a sever impact on his body…"

_Breathe in; breathe out…_

Ondine's hands stroke her throat lovingly. It's almost like a caress. She reaches up and presses her fingers against her collarbone. Phantom fingers follow her movements. Any moment now, she's going to press down and cut of the circulation. Rin will suffocate, and nobody will be able to help her.

"…The medical team was amazed at your skill in healing jutsus'…"

"What happened to him? Is he-is he…"

_Breathe in; breathe out_.

Ondine wasn't real. There were no fingers digging into her neck.

…But why was she finding it hard to breathe? Why was her throat closing in on her?

"…Obito, well, as I said, the damage was-"

"-please," she wheezes out, black spots swim in front of her.

There was a pause.

Then, "Obito-"

"He's alive, Rin, but barely."

Kakashi.

Ondine's fingers turn into Rin's, and she tugs her hand away from her throat. There were no phantom fingers, only her own.

There was no curse.

…Obito.

He's-he-

"Please tell me you're not joking-"

"-Room two-oh-six."

She runs.

Nobody stops her when she opens the door and rushes into the hallway, nearly knocking down several nurses in her haste.

Her lungs work by themselves, without her telling them too. They heave and heave as air – crisp, clean, wonderful – air fills her lungs again and again.

Everything is working right: her lungs, her heart – she's all right. Obito is, too. His lungs are working and his heart is pumping blood. He's _alive._

She could laugh, and scream, and run, and sing, and cry, and punch something – because, because…

Room two-oh-six is suddenly in front of her. The door ajar and she can see nurses bustling in and out, holding clipboards and relieved expressions on their face.

"Can I help you?"

There's a woman standing beside her, holding a stack of papers. "I-I'm…Is he…"

The nurse smiles kindly at her. "Your friend is going to be okay." Her smile drops and her shoulders tense. "But, I'm afraid that the damage to his body was very severe. He might not regain any feeling in the right side of his body ever again. His bones are practically in splinters and – hey!"

Rin moves away from the nurse, walking on autopilot into the room. Her heart is creaking in her chest like the gears in a pulley, and her legs are made out of metal. Sluggishly she walks into the room.

He's lying there.

Pale and…and…

_Scarred_.

Broken.

_Damaged._

…But he's alive.

_Barely_. The word echoes in her mind and tastes like poison on her tongue. She did the best she could – really. She tried so hard. Was it enough?

Rin drops into the chair beside his bed, hands reaching out to take his limp hand. It's cold in her grasp.

She wants to cry.

"O-Obito-kun…"

He doesn't move. Lying there pale, lifeless – Rin thinks he sort of looks like a broken doll. The bandages wrapping around his body only make things worse. He looks…_dead_.

"I-I'm so sorry…"

Maybe if she was a little stronger, a little better at what she did, he could've gotten out of that with nothing but a scratch.

"You did the best you could," Kakashi's sitting beside her – when did that happen? – staring at the boy in the bed.

The stark white sheets make him look smaller, frailer, and fragile. She wants to reach out and brush the onyx hair from his forehead. It must be tickling his nose.

The white bandages wrapped around the right side of his head and body is stained with red blotches of blood. It's grotesque and makes her stomach churn, but she can't look away.

"I-I _tried_, Kakashi-kun," she pleads, her eyes stinging.

His hand moves to grasp hers. "I know."

"Was it enough?" She whispers.

Kakashi doesn't answer.

The rhythmic beating of the heart monitor takes over the terse silence that hung between them.

She tries to find comfort in the sound.

_Beep, beep, beep…_

_Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump…_

Ondine's hands are back, squeezing the air from her lungs.

_Breathe in; breathe out…_

And repeat.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

They force her from his bedside when the elders of his clan come in to make an assessment. She knows what this really means – sees it happen when a patient is brought in on the brink of death and there isn't much they can do to save him.

It's the family's decision to keep them alive or…

She can't think about that, and pours over a medical journal she found in the library.

Going home, seeing all the pictures hanging oblivious on the walls, would only make things worse. The library is a haven for her. She reads until her eyes aren't focused anymore and stumbles home into her bed. The next morning, she wakes up, goes to the hospital and sits beside Obito until it's time to leave and ends up at the library again.

There are methods in the book about how to heal someone's internal and external injuries. She wishes she had this when Obito was first crushed, when there was a chance she could save him.

She finds a book on mythology, too.

Ondine's tale in on page three-sixty-five nestled between water nymphs and mermaids. She reads it again and again until she can recite the story backwards to front.

It's…fascinating. She never indulged herself in folklore passed down through written and oral traditions. The meaning was always lost in translation and the facts skewered by attempts to pretty the story up for urban readers. Still… there was something that drew her to the tale.

Maybe she was becoming delusional.

Stress was a horrible strain mentally and physically.

The library was a distraction from Obito – or, it was supposed to.

Everything, she eventually learned after all the books started to remind her of Obito's doomed fate, came back to him in the end, it seemed.

She wasn't sure if this new revelation was comforting or should make her worry more.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Three weeks later, when she's beginning to become numb to Obito's plight and accept his fate, he wakes up.

It's not like it was in the movies. There wasn't some sob speech about how she missed him _ohso_ much and how she hated seeing him lying there, crying over his body. He didn't wake up to the kiss of her lips or the warm gaze of a friend.

No.

He woke up to starch white walls and _pain_.

He was all alone when he opened his eyes.

She came in an hour later after everyone else said their peace and the doctor delivered the same, pre-written words of faux-comfort. It was toned down since none of them were related to him, and the words sounded like a exasperated drawl to their ears, but their shoulders went lax under the words, _he'll be okay_.

Okay.

Not _good_. Not _great_.

He'll be _okay_.

They weren't sure that he'd ever walk again. Or if his bones would heal after being splintered in such a way, but it was better than nothing.

It was better than dead.

She sits in the same chair she'd been permanently placed in for the last three weeks, and bites nervously on her lip. Breathing was just starting to get better, too. Ondine went away and her lungs were rejoicing in her absence, but when Kakashi told her that he was awake, she made her appearance again._  
_

It wasn't as bitter, but it was still acidic.

"R-Rin-chan," he mumbles slowly. It sounds smothered and awkward, and he can only use one side of his face, and she doesn't want to look and see him staring at her because his expression might just kill her, and –

"I'm glad you came."

She swallows, and keeps her gaze on his hand clutching hers. "W-why wouldn't I?"

"Its fine, Rin-chan," he says, and the despondency in his voice nearly breaks her into pieces. "If you don't want to be here, I-"

"That's not it!" She finally looks into his eyes when she says this, remorse etched into her face. "I-I wanted to be here, but…"

"You're here now."

When did he become so much stronger than she was? Why could he lie there, broken, scarred, and unable to move one side of his body, while she – with the use of every part – still lingered in the uncertainty and fear? What was she so afraid of?

"I'm sorry," she sobs, and drops her head on his forearm. "I'm so, so sorry, Obito-san…"

"What are you sorry for?"

She cries harder at his words, because it's something he'd say and mean.

"I-I couldn't save you…"

His arms moves away from her – and the absence of his warmth scares her – and wraps it around her shoulders, slowly pulling her head to the crook of his neck. She lies awkward on the bed with her feet on the ground. He soothes her with sweet words and promises that he's _all right_.

Rin is kind of thankful that he never once said _okay_, and allows herself to find selfish comfort in his embrace.

Neither of them speaks for the rest of her visit.

When it's time to go, she gently presses her lips to his forehead and leaves without a word.

.

.

.

.

They don't bring up the first time she came, and fall into a routine that's anything but easy.

On the outside, she's just a friend visiting her teammate.

On the inside, she's a wreck and looking for forgiveness.

Obito is exasperated by her attempts to squeeze in just _one _apology with each passing day.

"Stop it, Rin-chan," he finally snaps. "You didn't _do anything_."

Rin's lip trembles. "I-I know…"

"I forgive you."

"I know…"

"You're my best friend."

"I know…"

"And…I love you."

"I," she stops, eyes wide and stares at him. "…Obito-san?"

Her lungs are being compressed.

He blushes, but doesn't back down from her shocked gaze. "I love you."

She heard his confession when he said it before – when she thought that he was going to die - but didn't want to think about it. How could he still love her after this? "Why?"

"Y-you're not supposed to ask _why_ when someone says they love you, Rin-chan."

Since when did he become the sturdy one in this relationship? "I-I…"

"I know that you probably still love Kakashi, and that you deserve more than a broken ninja who can't – R-Rin-chan…?"

She runs.

It's like the time when Kakashi told her the room number that Obito was staying in – only instead of running _to_ him, she's running away. His words – the expression on his face – break her heart even more than it is, and she can't stand it.

She can't be in the same room as him, can't listen to his words any longer.

As she runs, she thinks of air and being weightless.

She thinks of a life with Obito.

(And for once, Ondine doesn't chase after her.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Rin thinks that people assume too much of her as she looks into the furious eye of Kakashi.

He's blocking her door, cutting off her only escape route.

"What are you doing, Rin?" He asks, and crosses his arms over his chest.

Why is he here?

"What are _you _doing, Kakashi-kun?"

"He loves you."

It's strange hearing these words fall from his lips.

"…I know."

There isn't any point in avoiding it. Obito loves her. For some unfathomable reason, he does. It's scary and new, and she kind of knew all along, but didn't want to push it, didn't want to talk about it. How could he love her after this? How could he stand to be in the same room as her?

The guilt eats away at her.

If only she was stronger. If only she could do _more_.

She wasn't enough for Obito.

He deserved so much – more than she could ever begin to offer.

"So, why are you hiding here?"

Kakashi surprises her a lot. "I…don't know."

Except she does and it _hurts_.

"Do you love him?"

Does she?

No.

Yes.

Maybe.

A little.

"…Too much."

Somewhere between water nymphs, and curses, and the smell of old, used books, she found that her heart severed itself free from her chest cavity and managed to find its way to Obito's bedside. Ever since, it has refused the pleas from her head to come back home and be reasonable about everything. It's stubborn, but so is she.

Kakashi places his hand on her head and pulls her into his chest. It's the closest she's ever been to him – excluding that time when they thought Obito was going to die and he crushed to his side and refused to let her go, even when Minato and the medics urged him to do so. She was kind of under heavy sedative and didn't really know what was going on.

Sometimes she thinks that it was all a dream, but the memory was so clear and precise, and she can still smell the sweat, the musk, and feel the tears that smeared over her shoulder when he finally did let her go.

"Since when did you become so stupid – so scared – Rin?"

Somewhere in the middle of old stories, and rocks, and bandages stained red, and Obito lying in a pool of his own blood, and her, standing there and not being able to help, she lost all the courage in her body and fear crawled inside the empty spaces that were once filled with light and happiness, and optimism.

"I don't know."

Kakashi's kind of special, she thinks, because under his cold exterior, he somehow manages to chase away all of the fear and uncertainty from her, cementing them in with a sense of _strength_ and certainty. It's odd.

"Go," he says, pulling away from her. "Stop being stupid."

And she does.

Rin doesn't run because there isn't anything chasing her anymore.

She walks, and doesn't think.

She's done enough of it lately.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

She's reminded of the fable about a princess who was locked away in a tower and the courageous prince who had to get past a horrible dragon to save her.

Rin wasn't the princess. She was the tower that held the princess captive.

Obito is the courageous prince.

Her uncertainty and fear is the dragon.

There is no princess in her fairytale.

Room two-oh-six never gave her a sense of relief before. It was strange how just a week ago, this number gave her chills and a sense of regret and foreboding. Obito's lying there, getting ready to leave the hospital for good and under-go surgical treatment to try and repair the damage on his body.

Nobody really believes that he'll be able to do the things he was able to before, but that's all right. he should be dead by now. Anyone else would have been killed.

Maybe he is dead.

Maybe she's insane and this is all a delusion, and after his death they locked her up in an asylum and she's been living in a fairytale ever since.

It hurts too much to think like that, and she's trying to avoid thinking.

She doesn't too much of it anyway.

Clearing her thoughts away, she opens the door and walks inside. He's on the bed – his bandages are not stained with blood anymore and he's looking…better – and her heart stops for a moment, and nearly _leaps _out of her chest at the sight of him.

Or maybe her heart was finally coming home, reuniting with her stubborn mind to form the semblance of a treaty.

She'll love him and her head will shut up for once.

"Rin-chan…?"

At his words, she breaks.

"I'm stupid, Obito-san; really, really stupid. I shouldn't love you – well, actually, you shouldn't love _me_. I-I think too much, and I can't cook – like, at all – but, but I know that you like to eat dangos anyway, so we can live off of those until one of us learns how to cook. It's not really a good plan, but Kakashi and sensei were always the planners of the group, weren't they? You're more of the doer, and I'm just the one who helps when I can. So, I know it's probably useless now, but I just wanted you to know that when I'm with you, I can _breathe_, and-"

"-Ah, I-I don't know what you're talking about, Rin-chan…"

"-I can breathe when I'm with you," she says, and walks to him.

"I can breathe when I'm with you, too, Rin-chan, but I still don't-"

Her lips are against his before he can say anything else.

It's clumsy kissing one side of his face, but she doesn't mind it. Gingerly, she touches the side wrapped in the rough gauze and presses herself closer. Her face is burning when she pulls away.

Obito's is too, and he's blinking at her dumbly.

"I _still _don't know what's going on…"

"I...love you, Obito-kun."

She thinks of Ondine one last time as her lungs work easier now that she's finally gone –

- No, she wasn't really there to begin with, was she?

Rin says a silent goodbye to whatever was crushing her throat and making it harder to breathe, and listens to Obito's stammering declaration of love, and his promise to get better and never leave her with a big, stupid grin on her face.

She's not scared anymore.

Obito is beside her – alive and well, and _breathing_.

Air, crisp, clean, refreshing, fills her lungs until they feel like they're about to burst.

_Breathe in; breathe out…_

…Why did she ever find it hard in the first place?

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**note3:** hm. i kindofsortof really like this one.  
**note4: **sorry for the late update. happy (late) Hanukkah everyone! =)


	13. ashes

**under the same sun**

**ashes  
****summary:** he wasn't sure if she was lighting the match or pouring the gasoline.  
**characters: **Tobi/Rin  
**honorable mentions: **Kakashi, Minato, Kabuto, Zetsu(s), others  
**note1: **wow, i'm so glad i was able to keep up with updates and not let crippling writers block and procrastination get to me! _i wish sarcasm had its own font. _anyway, happy 2013.  
**note2: **um. i blame this on _Bon Iver_, _Dead Man's Bones_, _Soley_. a diet of peppermint tea, no sleep, and a bottle of prozac. this has more angst than a Morrissey single. _enjoy _this whopping mess of 21, 272 words. srsly.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

He's always chasing her in his dreams.

They play cat and mouse: the closer he gets to her, the further she seems to drift from his grasp. Sometimes, he closes his fist and catches the fabric of her shirt or the golden-brown strands of her hair. Most of the time, all his fingers close around is the dank, stale air that burns his lungs with each inhale.

Some nights, when everything piles on top of each other and he can't seem to find a reprieve from the chaos outside, she's sitting on the top of a hill, looking down at him with a smile. Her finger curls toward him, beckoning him forward like a queen would a court jester. And he performs for her.

The hill turns into a mountain the closer he gets. Rocks turn into silly asphalt. Vines turn into thorns. No matter how hard he stretches his arms, no matter how far he climbs, he can never get to the top. The summit extends into the sky; she plays in between the planets and the galaxies, catching stars in her hands and holding them close to her chest.

The universe is her playpen.

He's not allowed up there – gravity pushes him down, dropping him to the bottom of the ocean where he can only watch her swim through the infinite blackness, the vacuum of space. Rin is a pigment of colors. She dances in front of his eyes gracefully, moving at the speed of light. Sound can't touch her.

He can't touch her.

Those are the dreams he can deal with the next morning. They crawl into the back of his mind and hide in the crevices between memories and reality.

It's the ones that pollute his subconscious and conscious mind. There was supposed to be an invisible line that they didn't cross – the dreams could run rampant at night, as long as they didn't venture out into the daylight. But these – the horrible, mutilating, _burning _ones – do.

Rin dies.

Over and over –

_andoverandoverandoverandoverandover –_

again.

Kakashi makes false promises.

(_Protect Rin –_

I will.)

His words echo loudly in the vastness darkness surrounding him. They sound so sincere, so true. And he believes them, gets wrapped up in the delicate lies that comfort him. It's his biggest folly.

(_Protect Rin –_

I will.

I will. i will. iwilliwilliwilliwill.

i lied.)

They taunt him mockingly. The sound of his voice turns ugly, turns hateful, spiteful. Obito watches as his friend – the man who Rin loved with all of her heart – thrusts his hand out and pierces her chest. Blood runs down his hand, catching on the blades of grass below his feet.

_pat pat pat_

He watches as Rin's mouth opens in a silence scream. Watches as the light in her eyes dulls, turns grey, and then dead. She falls to the ground in a heap, the thud her limp body makes is worse than any torture – worse than when she'd removed his eye, worse than when she'd loved Kakashi and not him – that could have been inflicted on him.

Move. All she has to do is move a muscle, twitch a finger. All she needs to do is move _everso_ slightly, and he might be able to breathe again; he might be able to _live_ again. But she doesn't.

She never does.

(Never did –

_never will_.)

The ground is painted red. Blood red – her blood; her red – and gleaming in the dim lighting of the sun that sets slowly to a grotesque bloodorange. The soil around her limbs soaks up the endless stream of liquid still pouring from her body, her heart. Her _dead_ heart that will no longer beat, that will no longer keep her alive.

It drips to the ground, swirling and spinning down an invisible drain.

His feet move without his command, measured steps moving in a methodical manner toward the girl lying still, lying cold, and lying dead. _One, two, three_: a stone catches on the ends of his sandal; _four, five, six_: her blood makes a disgusting squelching noise under his feet; _seven, eight, nine_: the air around him drops below freezing; _teneleventwelve_: he drops to her side, knees drenching in her warm blood.

Fingers brush the ends of her hair. His hands cradle her head in his arms, pressing her to his chest. She sags - limp, dead - in his arms, her weight pulling him down.

How horrible, he thinks: _even in death she was the loveliest thing he'd ever seen_.

Shakily, he smoothes out the mess of her hair down, and covers her eyes with his hand. His chest wracks with sobs that are ripped from his throat; his lungs heave with the effort to draw in a breath. Tears burn his eyelids and streak down his cheeks like acid. His heart –

oh, god, his _heart_

(stops beating in his chest. it's dead; she took it with her to the _otherside_, the place where she would be a queen, and left his ribs to feel the emptiness, the hole where the organ was supposed to be. it wants to be with her, with the one it belongs to. he never could call it his, because it was always hers –

always.

and it will follow her into death. it will follow her to the ends of the earth, to the planets and sit on the sun where they would burn in beautiful agony, where they would make the galaxies their own and call the stars their home. or to the depths of the ocean where they would live with the fish and dance in the sand.)

- His heart hurts. The thrumming in his chest gets louder and louder in his ears. He'd thought the beats were just a random rhythm with no real objective, with no real purpose or sound, but that's not true.

Because his heart, his heart chants her name like mantra; it never falters or stops, only sings her monosyllabic name louder and louder or _slower, slower_.

It calls out to her: rinrinrin

But she doesn't answer.

He looks down, then, and her eyes are open – they are open, and they are staring at him, accusing – and it was _his _hand that rips through her chest, his hand that kills her. It was him_himhim_, and Kakashi looks on with a tortured expression as Obito kills the only person who could possible mean anything to them; he kills the only person they love. He opens his mouth and vipers bite into each one of Obito's arteries.

_Why, Obito? Why?_

No.

No, no.

It wasn't him. He didn't kill Rin. Kakashi did. He saw him do it.

How – how could he ever do such a thing to her?

He couldn't.

(_Protect Rin _–

I will.)

But you didn't. youkilledheryoukilledrinyoudiditandnowherbloodstai nsmyhands –

He wakes up with her name on his lips. Agony rips through his chest, through his head. Flames lick at his body, nipping his skin, and he tries to scream, tries to move, but something is holding him down, something was suffocating him, something was –

The blankets are tightly wrapped around his body, constricting his movements. He heaves over the side when he finally wriggles free, trying to clear the smoke from his lungs and extinguish the fire that burns so hotly in his chest.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Repeat.

When his lungs hurt from and threaten to burst at the seams, he goes limp over the edge of the cot, soaking up the dank, stale air that surrounds him. His skin is slick with sweat that makes the sheets cling to him and he gives up trying to wrestle free of their hold. Instead he counts the cracks on the ground under his nose, and the little spider sitting on the side of his dresser, unassuming to the plight running through his head.

The sweet oblivion the arachnid is allowed makes him seethe with jealousy. Why should it be the only one to walk away unscathed? Why would it sit there, and not have to deal with the torrent of insanity and grief and horror that returns to haunt him every night? It's like clockwork. The _things_ that dance on the line of fantasy and reality, smirking at him in the shadows when they know he's pretending not to look, not to notice them mocking him from the sidelines, waiting for him to close his eyes and lower his guard.

They wait and they win.

They wait for him, and the conquer him.

It's humiliating; it burns through him with a shame that incinerates him whole, leaving messy streaks of his rationality and his pride on the ground without a care. He hates how easily he can fall victim to the torment, to the dreams. That's all they are: _dreams_. They are not real.

They are all in his head.

It does not exist.

When the erratic, nonsensical beats of his heart finally calm down, he pulls himself back together, picking up the pieces that lay shattered on the floor. It's a slow process. He has to locate everything by stumbling blindly in the dark, on hands and knees, searching for the right matches and the proper places where everything fits.

Sometimes he makes a mistake and the fragments don't line up, but he pushes and pushes until they snap in place awkwardly, and it only troubles him all the more next time when he's on his back at three in the morning, screaming for a ghost that doesn't exist anymore.

After the shoddy attempts to right all the parts are over and he can breathe without his lungs tossing it out or think without being corrupted, he rolls on his back and stares at the ceiling. Cracks line the stone and remind of the day he died. Looking up and seeing the rocks loosen and start to fall, and seeing Kakashi standing there, unable to move, about to be crushed. Pushing him out of the way and feeling the heavy weight of it pressing him down, and then pain, and then nothing.

It brings the dull thrum of pain on his right side alive. With all the morphine swimming in his veins, tainting his blood, the initial agony was gone, replaced with a pseudo-nirvana. The scars sometimes hurt, they sometimes pull too tightly and feel too raw, but he breathes. And he overcomes it.

And then it's gone.

Obito always thought that dying – that being crushed under a rock – was the worst form of torture he could ever experience. But then Rin died, and then she came back to haunt him in his dreams. That hurts more than anything.

She sets him on fire without even trying.

It leaves an impression so annihilating on his psyche that the charred remains of his sanity begin to slowly slip away. He'd never been interested in anything other than being Hokage when he was younger and the thick books Rin would read on medicine and psychology and psychiatry would bore in to tears when he'd eventually pick one up to avoid the monotony of the day, but certain passages he'd read stuck to him, even now.

Psychosis.

He couldn't tell you the difference between a schizophrenic or a sociopath, but that one word, that one illness, wormed its way inside his head, inside the crevices where he'd kept all the important things to ponder over late at night when sleep evaded him, and it would present itself from time to time.

Maybe he was beginning to deteriorate and the sickness was taking over his mind.

Or maybe this was his grieving process.

But it has been years. Years since she took her last breath. The expanse between then and now is so vast, he could fit several worlds inside the depths and it would still never be full.

And he's not that little boy anymore.

He's not the boy who had stars shining in his eyes and optimism stapled to his heart. The feeble ideals and beliefs are gone, replaced with iron-clad wills and rationalities. He doesn't think that companionship and camaraderie were important. Friendship is nothing. Mutual gain and profit is everything.

The ocean wasn't all that deep.

The sky wasn't all that far away.

Obito was the little boy who had everything within his reach but not quite there.

Tobi is the man who has everything at the tips of his fingers, waiting for him to grasp it.

The two were vastly different. Universally so. Thinking about something petty like grief was something _Obito_ would do. _Tobi_ would lock it away, ignore it and move on. He wouldn't be haunted by dreams that meant nothing; that couldn't touch him as long as it eyes were open.

Obito was the one who thought that they were hiding in the shadows, waiting for him. Calling out to him lulling him to sleep so they can extract their bitter plans and mock him all the while. That was a child's belief.

He was no longer a child.

That little boy was dead, and so was Rin.

Nothing could change that.

(And nothing ever will.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

His war-paint is black.

His plans are foolproof.

Everything was falling into place; everything was going _so wonderfully well_ for him that he'd almost forgotten about how much karma likes to stab him in the back. How much it likes to mock him and laugh when he's crying out for a reprieve from her bitter claws.

The kink in his scheme is a smarmy man with scales for skin and a triumphant smirk.

Kabuto Yakushi.

He slinks up and down the halls like he'd been permitted their use. Pulling things out and putting them back in the wrong order, all for spite. And he knows he can get away with it because he has something hanging over Obito's – _Tobi's_ – head that makes him all the more agreeable to their plan.

It burns like acid when he listens to the man, watching as he continues to contribute in little ways. He hates having to listen, and take orders, from such a man. Although he continues to maintain a distance, it's the sheer benefit of using the man that keeps him from cutting his head off.

He needs Kabuto alive – for now. That aspect of it, that general '_but…_' keeps him from acting out irrationally and ruining everything. He's useful to him. Eventually, when he'd overstayed his welcome, when everything was over and his role in this plot was finalized, he could unfurl his hand and use it to rip out the man's jugular.

The Edo Tensei was an ingenious move. He watched at it made enemies pause and falter, and then break into pieces at the sight of their loved ones being used so nonchalantly. It was a powerful technique; he'd been hesitant to use it, to try and master the power. Letting Kabuto control everything was easier.

His hands would remain only slightly dirty from this mess.

(A man who used the dead like puppets was not a man to be trifled with.)

It wasn't real; the people who were brought back were only fragments of their formers selves. They held only certain memories and feelings. It was the general idea of the deceased, not the whole thing. No matter how hard someone tried, they could never bring back someone to life completely.

A part of them died and left. That absence, the crater sized gap inside them, allowed other things – things that were beyond human capabilities and understanding – to fester and grow.

Those were nothing but shadows of the people they were supposed to represent.

Still.

The idea the of it all, the grandiose dreams and hopes that a loved one could return, was enough to break many strong men and woman who sought the technique out – for personal gain or a temporary mitigation from the loneliness. It was enough to make anyone go insane; to bring back someone who was dead.

It was a feeble idea, chalked full of consequences.

But –

It was so appealing.

And, _Rin _–

No.

She was dead. He shouldn't even be considering tarnishing her memory with some second-rate version of the original. It would only impede his plans; she – _it_ – would get in the way.

He couldn't let that happen.

The dreams, though; they haunted him with a vengeance. Even in the daylight – when the little boy thought that nothing could touch him – they resurfaced. Each time he closed his eyes, all he would see is –

Rin.

Kakashi.

Her dying.

Him killing her.

And then Minato.

Minato was the newest addition to the game. He would sit there, on a hill, and watch with his cool blue eyes. Obito would stumble blindly for a while, and then _he_ would smile. It wasn't a twisted grin or a nostalgic bitterness; it was the same one he'd given them when they were assigned to his team. That old smile that churned his insides and, at one point, made him want to fight harder, prove himself, and make the man – his sensei – proud.

The manifested guilt that collected over the years was catching up to him. He couldn't outrun it this time. Like Rin, and Kakashi, Minato had finally caught up and grasped his shoulders in a tight, almost crushing, embrace and refused to let go.

Sleeping pills couldn't help him.

They'd only make everything more warped. It was like looking at everything through a kaleidoscope.

Rin was still the main cause of all his nightmares. She frequented his dreams more than the others; always there, always waiting for him. He could deal – somewhat – with Rin: he didn't kill her.

It was Minato that made him completely immobile for hours, staring at nothing.

Those dreams made him want to curl into a tight ball and forget everything. He'd grasp at his hair until locks of black slipped out from between his fingers and fell to the ground.

He still didn't know what he would accomplish from this. It was a horrible idea. Letting Kabuto have even a margin of control over him tugged unpleasantly at his stomach and made his mouth taste like poison.

At the time, when he'd been half delirious from the sleeping pills he'd swallowed, he made a plan. This one didn't include Madara – something that never happened before. All of his carefully crafted ideas had inputs from the man; sometimes the whole plan was sculpted by him with Obito playing the sycophant.

It was merely a rough draft to a titanic-sized problem.

(a part of him, that little voice in the back of his head that shouts about honor and friendship and promises and the good in everyone, wants it to work. _he _wants this for purely selfish reasons; he wants to see her one last time, talk to her and apologize. this whole scheme was all for some fickle redemption that tobi didn't agree would work, or even help, but that other part – obito – was persistent and wouldn't shut up about the idea until it turned into a possibility that tobi began to use.)

Maybe by reconstructing a fragment of Rin, he would clear his conscience a little.

Brining a semblance of her back, he could find a little relief from his subconscious.

It was a hastily and ill-prepared idea. There was no basic of truth, no foreseeable outcome that would help him even slightly.

(He had too much pride to admit that maybe – maybe – he wanted to bring her back for purely selfish reasons, also.)

He steels his resolve and goes over his plan – and the bargaining chip in case Kabuto decided he wanted something in return – and tries not to choke on the revulsion that slams into him.

This was to end the plaguing quilt that clung to him.

(and maybe, maybe a piece of him, too, wanted to see her one last time – to say goodbye and to give her insight before she would be welcomed into her new reality. maybe he was selfish as well. maybe.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Asking Kabuto for a favor leaves a horrible taste in his mouth.

Watching the triumph, the _gall_, swim in his silted eyes churns his stomach.

He sits on edge, waiting for the questions that will surly come. Counting his hand, he narrows his visible eye in contempt and watches as Kabuto pretends to mull everything over. When the snake-like man shifts and his gaze turns gloating, Obito knows that he's come to a decision. What he wants is already been planned out and he won't agree unless it's met.

"If I bring her back, what's in it for me?"

There it was.

Obito doesn't say anything. He has to wait a little longer, make sure everything was laid out. With no piece of paper between them to prove the existence of the deal, he has to be careful, he has to be cautious. It would imprudent to ask him what he wants – which, is exactly _what he wants_ - and he collects the mask of indifference that has become second-nature now, and gives a faux air of nonchalant.

"When," he reiterates the wording Kabuto used, turning it in his favor. "When you bring Rin back – severing all control over her immediately – I will allow you a black Zetsu to experiment on."

He notes with great satisfaction as Kabuto's expression flickers.

The man leans forward, deliberately invading Obito's space. "I want four Zetsus'; two black and two white."

"No. One black Zetsu and that's final."

Kabuto smirks. "How much does she mean to you?"

The effect is instantaneous. Everything spins into a sharp panic, a rooted paranoia that makes his blood run cold in his veins. He can't possibly know about her. There was no way – he could've only heard her name in passing, in a death certificate and nothing more. No, it was just because of the sudden interest in using the Edo Tensei; her name was attached to it because he wanted her to be the one brought back. That was all.

He levels his obscured gaze at the man sitting opposite of him. "My plans are none of your concern, Yakushi."

Playing with fire was going to get him burned one way or another. Looking in Kabuto's eyes – the poorly masked glee at having one more thing to hold over his head – reinforced that thought.

But he'd been rolling in ashes since Rin died.

Kabuto's words fall of deaf ears – and he should be listening; the man was trouble when left to his own devices, almost as much as Orochimaru, but much more cunning and sneaky – and he thinks only about his hand. The cards were at odds with each other and fit more for blackjack than poker, but he'd make this work.

He lays his cards down.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

In his dreams, Rin chases him.

He's perched on the highest mountain, watching her try to climb up to him. She's reaching her hand up, trying to grasp his, trying to pull herself to him, but his hands are chained to his sides and he can't move. Someone was screaming – her mouth was closed and he runs his tongue over the seam of his lips – but it's an echo inside a cave.

It's all in his head.

(Rin, Rin, Rin –

_Obito, no_ –)

Rin is struggling now, slipping down the steep slope. Her eyes are frantic as she tries to reach him, and her mouth is open, shouting words he can't hear.

Her fingers catch of the edge where he's sitting, mere centimeters from his feet, and she clings to the hard rock. The chains locking him in place refuse to loosen; there is no leeway to bend over and grab her, to pull her up on the mountain with him. She has to do it.

Something coils around her ankles, slipping up her calves. It tugs and tugs until she's hanging by four fingers, her thumb awkwardly trying to find purchase. And he should help her because – _three fingers_ – she's about to fall – _two fingers_ – down and probably – _one finger_ – die. But something is squeezing his neck, paralyzing him. The rope wrapped around her snakes up her arm, the scales cutting sharply into her arms.

It's the only thing holding her up.

But then it looks at him – all yellow gleaming eyes and twisted grins, and smug faces full of triumphant mockery – and opens its mouth; fangs protrude in a grotesque manner, saliva (or was that poison?) drips from the corners, corroding the ground where it falls.

He can see it coming before it happens. The déjà vu hits him like a tidal wave, slamming into his chest so hard he has to gasp little breaths of air, forcing them into his lungs. He knows that face, he knows those eyes and those fangs – he knows that coiled being; a fox hidden in the scales of a snake.

The fangs click.

_play with fire_

Rin screams.

It lets her drop to the ground, hissing out a chilling laughter that shakes him to the core.

_and you're going to get burned_

(but he's been rolling in ashes since she died and this doesn't feel much like being burnt, it's only a little tickle. so when the mountain starts to cave in, he braces himself for impact and thinks about the sweet scent of honey and burnt sugar – something he hadn't smelt since she was fixing a cut on his knee, and smiles.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Rin was breathing again.

Little gasps of breath through lungs that haven't worked in years break the uneasy silence in the room. The grey of her skin and the cracks that marred her body keep him from touching her, brushing the stains of wayward hair that ghost along her jaw and under her nose. It's the fear that she might splinter into a million tiny pieces if he applies too much pressure against her new skin that keeps him rooted on the other side of the bed, perched on an old chair.

The withered look to her borrowed skin would fade away into a smooth ivory, reminiscent to the one she had before. White would bleed over the earthly blackness of her sclera and her irises would return to the brown-gold ridges and flecks. She would eventually fall back into the rhythm of the living; her heart would pick up the age-old tune, like strumming the stings of a guitar after years without practice. She would falter and pick some of the notes too hard or too soft and try to break away from the sway of the soundless music, but soon all that would flicker out of existence and she wouldn't even remember the morbid beauty of death.

He wonders how long it will take her to realize that the body she's using is rented. When the taste of her lips is oddly comparable to blood and dirt? Or when the crushing weight she feels on her chest feels suspiciously like being buried _six feet deep_? Maybe nightmares of Kakashi's betrayal will wake her up late at night and the dots will connect themselves.

Would she hate him for it - for disrupting her eternal sleep for a vague idea of redemption that might not come true? Would she care?

(_Would he_?)

His mouth tastes like ashes at the though and leaves the room as quietly as he came in. The only echo is her shallow breathing and rustling sheets.

_she was a dead girl who is now alive and he's not sure how he feels about that._

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Two days later, she wakes up.

Her echoed scream curls his blood in his veins and makes his heart clench to so tight, he's afraid it might burst.

_rinrinrin-rinrinrin_

It chants her name like it had before, calling out to the girl who was supposed to be dead, relishing in the release it feels from finally coming home. He tries to ignore the pounding in his chest and the longing to go see her, to hold her close and not to let go ever again –

because you did that once and look what happened.

He sends a Zetsu to bring her food (_three meals a day – don't ask questions, don't talk to her, just do it_) and take her out of the metaphorical cage she's inside once a day (_if she escapes, i'll have your head_).

For three weeks he avoids the room she's in.

It cowardly, but the pain that burns deep in his marrow feels too much like being set on fire to ignore, and she might not have water, only gasoline.

_and he can't take that chance. not again._

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

There is a sliver of terror that crawls up his spine, digging large talons in each vertebra, and plucking them like strings. He's never felt such unease before; it wraps around his body, squeezing tightly. It's sharp and new, and so painful, it's nearly crippling. The feeling makes his stomach churn, because even when he was staring up at the cracking boulders about to crush his body, he'd never felt such paralyzing fear.

His enemies would roll in their graves if they knew that out of all the things that would eventually be his downfall, it was a wooden doll with a simple frame, held in place by three brass hinges.

(And a little girl who's supposed to be dead.)

All of his composure is shattering into pieces. He tries to reign in the determination he built up two hours ago when Zetsu first came to his room and told him Rin – the girl – wanted to see him. It made his heart race and his palms sweat to know that she wanted him, wanted to talk.

It fizzled into bitterness when the realization that she didn't want him – _Obito_ – she wanted the man who was keeping her caged up like an animal: Tobi. One of the Zetsus' must have let it slip that he was the one behind her apparent kidnapping.

He braces himself for the inevitable confrontation. To her, she was a prisoner. She was the one being held hostage, unable to leave and given only a shred of freedom, all dictated and controlled by him. Completely oblivious to how backward it was; she was the one with all the power, she just didn't know it.

_Yet._

His hand pauses mid-air, posed to knock. That wasn't something _Tobi _would do – he'd burst in, the ditsy façade making nonsensical words spew from his mouth and the childish antics only serving as an annoyance. Or he would calmly slink through the door, quiet and all-consuming. He would demand attention; his raw power and mysterious aura dragging her to the edge of unease and fear.

(Obito would awkwardly knock before walking in, all blushes, sweaty palms and erratic heartbeats.)

He's caught between three personas, unaware how to act around her. She wouldn't understand the old Tobi; the unassuming lackey who wanted nothing more than to feel included. It might tug at her sympathy, but she wouldn't take him seriously. The other one, the embodiment of Madara would only put her on edge; she would tread carefully, like she was trained in high-stress situations where the captor could tilt toward either specter.

Then again: Rin was dead.

This girl was a stranger. Who knew what might've crawled out of the clutches of death with her.

Obito takes too much air into his lungs and turns the knob.

She's sitting on the bed, two of his books perched near her crossed ankles and one in her lap. Her brown hair is swept to the side, one single lock falling down her eyes, and her hand is raised to move it away. At the sound of the door opening, her eyes flicker up to his; confusion, anger, fear, distrust – she was never that good at masking her emotions, even now.

It's strange seeing her now. Age has been good to her; the roundness of her cheeks slimmed into a narrow jaw and pointed chin, and she looks less like a youthful little girl and more like a beautiful china doll, unblemished and untouchable; perfectly poised on the highest shelf to avoid being damaged.

But she was already broken once, wasn't she?

"Who are you?"

Her voice, older now, cracks with disuse.

He narrows his eyes in contemplation. He could lie – tell her some tale of grandeur, that she was needed for some nefarious purpose. It would leave him cast as the perpetual village; the antagonist without a protagonist. Her prince would never come: he's too caught up in the war raging on outside these walls to worry about girls who shouldn't exist.

"You don't need to concern yourself with that."

She shakes her head, frustration seeping into her voice. "Why am I here, then? Where is Kakashi?"

Kakashi. "Why do you want to know?"

"We were…on a mission," he catches the falter in her words, the uncertainty and pain in her voice that nearly breaks him. "And then…I woke up here. Why?"

She wants to know where the man who killed her was. It hurts more than it should.

"I've never heard of this Kakashi before."

He hates how hallow the words sound.

(He hates how, even now, Kakashi is the only thing on her mind.)

It seems some things never change, after all.

The door cracks down the middle when he slams it shut.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Their next meeting goes much the same way.

She asks questions. He deflects.

She gets angry. He leaves.

Repeat.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

"Why am I here?"

"You haven't been eating."

"What do you want from me?"

"Stop immobilizing my men."

Where am I?"

"Don't worry about it?"

"What do you want from me?"

For that, he has no answer.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

She doesn't trust him.

He's not sure if she's the real Rin or merely a shadow grabbed from deaths cold hands.

The combination leaves them both frustrated.

(And a little scared.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

With the war growing more intense as the days pass, his wounds continue to grow.

She notices the way he limps and hisses when an injury is disrupted, and asks about it.

"We're in the middle of a war," is the only answer he gives in regard to her questions.

Her worry grows; he can see it swimming in the depths of her eyes, lingering at the forefront of her mind. The dutiful shinobi inside her wants to break out and help her fellow countrymen. The medic side makes her antsy; she wants to help all the injured in any way her can.

Neither of them are strangers to world wars.

Eventually, the concern becomes too much and she hesitantly inches closer to him. "Can I see your wounds?"

Exhaustion tugs at the back of his mind. He never has time for sleep anymore. If she were to catch him off guard, she could kill him and leave.

Or worse: she could find out who he is.

He doesn't want to tarnish her memory of _Obito_.

"Don't touch me."

The words come out harsher than he intended, but the point gets across and she backs away, gnawing on her lip. He leaves a second later.

There's still a crack in the door.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Her questions vary between two subjects: her home and him.

She asks about Konoha. Which side is winning? What started it? Why did it happen?

(He tells her little things, not enough to formulate a real idea of what's going on, but enough to sate her curiosity.)

Then she asks his name. Why does he wear the mask? What was the extent of the injury?

(He gives her the pseudonym Tobi and that the mask covered a facial injury. Everything else is kept ambiguous and leaves her in the dark.)

Eventually, her questions are just narrowed down to Konoha and him.

If only she knew that _once upon a time_, they were one in the same.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Three weeks later, he's been injured during a reconnaissance in the Mist and stumbles into her room.

There's nothing but the throbbing in his head and the pain in his back. Everything else bleeds into the corners, shrouded in darkness.

It's her voice in his ear, ringing dully among the many voices screaming in his mind. Her heavy – _burningburningburning_ – touch on his arm that eventually calms the monsters raging in the background.

For once in a long time, there's only the soothing coo of her gentle tenor whispering in his ear and the warm hum of her chakra, healing his injuries.

That night, he doesn't dream.

(In the morning, he wakes up to the sound of her gentle breathing filling the empty spaces, and his body feeling weightless. It's the first time he woke up feeling truly rested.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

A routine is forged from their previous encounter.

Some trust is formed. Everything doesn't seem so grey.

He sits on the same chair when she was first brought to the hideout, and she stays on the bed. Sometimes they read in silence. Other times they discuss medical facts and how to undergo certain procedures. She's happy to finally have an active participant in her detailed debates about the proper way to amputate an arm, and he's glad to hear her familiar words fill his head.

When he's too tired to contribute to much, she pretends not to notice that he sometimes falls asleep on the chair, his head lolling to the side in a manner that's suspiciously nostalgic.

It's easy to forget, in the moments of solidarity between them, that's she's still a _hostage_ and he's still a _villain_.

Sometimes, it is better not to acknowledge it at all.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

He thinks about letting her go sometimes.

Split-second thought that creep inside and echo in his ears, over and over again. The logic behind the words – the guilt of keeping her locked away – all consumes him, and he starts to consider it.

She could make a life for herself.

Find someplace in the world that was truly befitting her and _live_.

The only thing that stops him – aside from the selfish desire to hide her away from the cruel world until everything is right and his reality seeps into the corners of this one, taking over easily – is her condition. Her borrowed body would eventually begin to break and decay. If he lets her go, the body will wither away and she'll die all over again; only this time, they're be no afterlife, only nothingness.

She deserves better than that.

(She deserves to be free of him – of this.)

The contradicting thoughts plague him for days. He can't shake off the burning need to keep her close and the want to let her go. It embeds itself inside his skin and constricts him.

It's a good idea.

It's a bad idea.

Repeat.

(In the end, he's much too selfish to let her go, so he burns the idea from his mind and pretends he never thought of it to begin with.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

All the accumulated peace between them disappears when she wakes up one morning to blood dripping from her ears, nose, eyes and mouth. Her scream echoes through the compound and rings loudly in his head for days.

He can see the confusion in her eyes, the terror and the questions she can't ask because that would make all of her conspiracies a reality.

There's no words when he sees her crouched on the ground, trying to stop the bleeding. Both of them know from the large quantity spilling from her body that she should at least be light-headed or even anemic, but she's not. He presses a napkin to her mouth, wiping away the smears of red from her porcelain skin.

Her tears mix with the blood, turning it a pinkish color on her cheeks and chin. He wipes it all away – careful, careful; she might shatter if he presses to hard – and gathers her up in his arms when the sobs subside into little hiccups.

He doesn't move from her side the entire night. The next morning, the sheets are stained red and no matter how hard he scrubs, his hands are permanently stained with her blood.

She locks herself in the washroom and refuses to come out.

He can still hear her sobs over the sound of the shower.

(She piles the bloodied sheets and clothes into the corner and he burns them the next morning.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

"It's the host's body rejecting the technique. If you keep her around for too long, eventually the body will begin to decay without a living soul."

"And how do you stop it?"

"Gather more vessels. That's the price to pay when you try to bring back the dead. It was never supposed to be permanent, only temporary. Humans get so selfish with the prospect of immortality, and what's stopping them from teaching the technique to someone else and killing themselves? It's the delusion that when they come back, they'll be around forever. Soon, it will all start to crumble –unravel at the seams, if you will – and once their soul is torn into so many pieces and put into so many different hosts, they'll begin to fade."

"What happens then?"

"Who knows? The afterlife is the greatest mystery of all."

"There's no way to reverse it?"

He smirks. "Of course, you could always kill her – _again_. That would make it stop."

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

There's a copious amount of doubts and questions simmering behind her hallow eyes. They stand out against the stark contrast of the emptiness; burning hot and unquenchable. It bites harshly at the tendons in his heart when he sees the look of unmasked confusion and distress etched in her face.

But she doesn't ask.

And he doesn't answer.

The old rhythm they fell into is broken and he doesn't think that hesitant trust can be salvaged. He stops trying to force it; the semblance of normalcy is gone and nothing he can do will ever bring it back. Looking at the emptiness in Rin's eyes is too much and he avoids her.

Throwing himself in the war effort and solidifying the last of the _Eye of the Moon_ plan takes up the majority of his days. The hunt for the remaining tailed beast embeds itself in the rest. He slaves over last minute details and leads that might help him catch the last factor to the puzzle in brining the ultimately reality tangible.

Sleep evades him for weeks.

Rin doesn't ask for him once.

(He pretends that the correlation between the two is meaningless.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Rin stops eating.

The food on her plate is picked up and returned to the kitchen, cool and untouched. They try to force her, uttering words that were supposed to make her cave in and eat, but she doesn't. She sits in the corner, staring at crack in the wall.

It makes him angry when he hears this, and for the first time in weeks, he goes to see her. This wasn't the Rin he knew – she wouldn't do this to herself. She was gentle strength and compassionate words, serene expressions and soft encouragement.

But this wasn't Rin.

This was a girl who grew up and died. Shadows filled the void where he was absent in her life. He'd only been around for her youth, never getting to see the person she morphed into. He's stuck in the pretense of when she was a smiling, round-faced little girl with big dreams and an even bigger heart.

He wants to pick her apart until she's that little girl again. That beaming thirteen year old who's whole world revolved around the subtext in medicinal text four inches thick, and getting Kakashi to notice her – at least once – and trying to hold the mismatched team together even though all the odds were against her.

It's the girl with stars in her eyes and a heart as big as the universe that spurned the desperation and childish selfishness that made him seek out a temporary fixture in an _idea_ of something that doesn't exist anymore. That little girl – the one from his youth that never aged, never changed – that was supposed to be his redemption; his reprieve from the monumental guilt that grew and grew to an uncontainable mass that fed off of his loneliness and nostalgia of when times were better.

A childish dream that was going to chase away all of the bad things from his memories and the ache in his chest that was like a slow burning fuse to a pile of dynamite.

He let himself get tangled in ideas and dreams, separating from reality that boldly thrust each of his flaws and his petty hopes back in his face. There was no coping or solace to be found in his misery and instead of letting his grief dissipate into a little throb, he let it fester into a scorching agony.

The thought of falling victim to petty thoughts stolen from sleepless nights and too many regrets singes in his veins.

He allowed himself to get swept away in the torrent of illusions and a little child who couldn't let go.

And staring at her now, the gauntness of her bones and the pallid pigment of her ashes skin, and knowing that he was one who reduced the girl who was once a bright flame into a shrunken, burnt out wick churns his insides.

When she speaks, the dull rasp and listlessness of her voice claws at his heart: "_what do you want from me_?"

He doesn't have an answer.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

"…I remember a sharp pain in my chest – and someone screamed, I think – and then nothing. It's all black and no matter how _hard _I try to get around the fog, it doesn't work. I can't. It's like I was sleeping; everything is numb and dark and I'm just _falling_ – and then I wake up, and I'm here. Even though it seems like seconds, I know it's been longer than that. And I just – I don't know what's going on. I feel so – so _wrong_. I can feel it in my bones. I haven't eaten in weeks, but I'm not – I'm not _starving_. My body is, but I can't feel anything. And then all the blood! I should be dead, I shouldn't be – what's going on? What's wrong with me? Why is this happening? Why do I feel like – like _I'm not supposed to be here_?"

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

He tells her slowly.

Little bite-sized pieces to an even bigger puzzle, as if to make sure she doesn't choke on them.

The give-and-take sessions happen each night, when all the stress of the days simmers into the background and he can take a break from Madara and the war, and hunting down the Kyuubi, and cutting down the vast armies out to get his head. It works both ways: he allows her a small portion to chew on and she tells him something from her youth, from the days when she was alive.

He divulges bits about himself, too. From where he was born – being vague enough to keep up the mask of mystery and open so that she wouldn't question him about the gaping holes in his stories – to his favorite food. They don't stray over uncharted territory anymore. Why she's here and the progression of the war dwindle out of their conversations until it's not as relevant to either of them anymore.

Neither of them discusses the subtle deterioration of her body; the fragility of her bones that groan with each movement, or the cataracts in her eyes, and the thinness of her skin that has turned a sallow grey. It's always lingering in the back of his mind – as is Kabuto's explanation.

He could fix her. It would be easy to find another sacrifice.

Then he would risk severing her already patched soul over and over again until his use of her was sated.

Or he could –

No.

He didn't want to think about that.

Losing her again – the thought is already clenching his heart agonizingly – and he dismissed it immediately.

There has to be another way.

But – death didn't work in half-truths and petty ideas of men.

It dealt in absolutes and facts.

Anything else was a temporary mitigation that would never last.

Like any fleeting form of relief, it would eventually unravel and everything would fall apart.

(He only hoped he had enough time before that happened.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

It happens sooner than he'd wanted.

Rin wakes up with ghosts weaving through the hallow crevices between her bones and exhausted look in her eyes that causes a lump to settle in his throat. Her despondent expression and echoing silence twists his insides.

"Rin-"

"What's happening to me?" Her hand lifts toward – colorless, limp – and she opens her mouth to say something more, but the words get caught and she falls into a crumble heap against the wall.

In three seconds, she's in his arms. Cold and pale, and barely breathing, but she's alive. He can feel the disjointed hum of her heartbeat against the pads of his fingertips. It's faint, but it's there.

He calls Kabuto four minutes later.

Five hours and her eyes flicker open.

In the sound of her third, shuttering breath, he tries not to let himself hear the resounding crack that echoes deafeningly in his head.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

It all starts to unravel at the seams.

Her borrowed skin takes time to grow into and she's awake before the fractures and the grey can fade. Everything – his lies and the question he couldn't answer – is on display when she looks in the mirror. He doesn't have enough time to forge anymore half-truths.

The black sclera and yellow irises are sharp and defined, grotesquely beautiful, when she turns to him with tears streaming down the sides of her face, dipping onto the crisp white sheets below.

"Why?"

The broken vulnerability in her voice nearly chokes him. "I–"

"One minute, I'm practically falling apart and the next I'm – I'm..."

"Rin-"

"-How do you know me?"

She presses on, narrowing her gaze at him.

He swallows and works his mouth, but nothing comes out.

"Who are you?"

On shaking legs, she stands and moves closer to him. Inches away from him, he can see the subtle differences between _this_ Rin and _that _Rin. She's taller, more confident in her poise. Her eyes are bleeding back to the deep shades of brown, but flecks of gold and amber also begin to mold into the ridges. He tries to disentangle himself from the loop inside his mind replaying the exploits of his childhood, centering on the younger version of the girl standing before him.

Shadows dance in his peripheral vision. He ignores them.

It's only _her _he can see.

_This _Rin.

She's beautiful – as she always was – but in a way that burns. The flicker of her light was now scorching flame. She wasn't muted in the background, straying from the fray and the collision between him and Kakashi when they fought. Perching herself in the forefront of everything, she etched herself from the constricting grief of losing a teammate, a friend, and used that to her advantage.

She's different – new and foreign – but cut from the same piece as _that _Rin to make _this _one.

It's almost suffocating.

"H-how do you fix it?"

Her voice breaks somewhere in the middle, caught on emotions that make her feel too much and truths that she can't deal with.

(He wonders if the look in her eyes, the despair on her face, matched the ones he woke up with each morning.)

She says something, but he's not listening.

Everything is spinning – the room is moving too fast, everything is blurring together in a whirlwind of colors and textures, and he blames it on the fatigue and lack of sleep because when he looks, there's this spark in her eyes that look too much like resignation and anticipation – and suddenly her hands are gripping the side of his mask, tugging and pulling.

His limps are too heavy; the marrow inside his bones dries up, and osmium leaks through the cracks. The clasps holding the porcelain in place stretch with the motions of her movements. One breaks and snaps below his ear, falling with a dull thud on the hidden armor beneath his cloak. He can feel it begin to slip.

The bones of her wrist are caught under the tight grip of his fingers.

He doesn't remember moving his arm.

She tries to shake him off, but he clenches harder until the cartilage begins to groan under the strain.

(He can't let her see him; he can't let her know –)

At her wince, he drops her hand and she pulls it to her chest, nursing the mottled purple bruise beginning to form over her skin. Disgusted, he flinches away from the sight of his red hand print glaring at him over smooth ivory. He didn't want to hurt her – he never wanted to hurt her – but he had; he wasn't even aware that he was doing it.

"Rin –"

She drops her gaze to the cobblestone floor, her black lashes brushing gently against the tinge of red dusting her cheeks. "Its fine," she says, her voice hoarse from yelling. "I'm okay."

He doesn't believe her. She won't meet his eyes and continuously rubs the pale skin of her wrist, almost rhythmically. It makes his stomach churn.

He hurt her.

There's an acidic taste in his mouth –

_or was it gasoline?_

- and he tries to swallow it down.

"I'm sorry," is all he says, and leaves.

(The crack in the door still wasn't fixed. It looks bigger now, almost splitting the wood in half.)

That night, he dreams about broken bones and fractured wood, and grey skin and yellow eyes. He doesn't go back to her room for three days, and pretends he's not a coward.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Four months later, she's still locked in the west wing.

He thinks of caged birds and broken wings, and remembers that this was what he wanted. It was all for her, wasn't it? Everything he'd ever done – and will ever do – was all for the girl who died (fourteen times; thirteen people), and isn't coming back. Without the technique, without the grey skin and yellow eyes that greet him every time he brings her back from death's clutches, she would still be sleeping peacefully in Konoha, nestled under layers of dirt and flowers laid out beneath her name, forever etched in stone.

Sometimes, he wonders if she can feel the weight of it all bearing down on her chest. If she can feel the feet of nameless, faceless people stepping over her withered body (the word corpse leaves the taste of ashes in his mouth). Can she feel the flowers sitting on her forehead? Or the hands brushing the snow and the leaves, and pulling the weeds from around her makeshift shrine when they grow along the sides of the marble encasing, marking where she rests?

He wonders if anyone knows that the grave is empty. That she's with him – and his grave is empty, too – and that he's keeping her prisoner, like some princess, locked forever away in a castle? When he sees Kakashi, watches him stare into the singular hole where his eye is, does he know he's looking in the face of the man who used to be his teammate, and temporary friend?

What does he see when he looks at the black swirls against the orange background? Does he think of Minato – who died staring at the same anonymous face – and Rin, and all of his mistakes?

(Does he ever think about them?)

These thoughts mock him loudly at night, when he's caught in the cusp of sleep and awake. They circulate around, riffling through each and every privet memory and thought that he's locked tightly away, dragging everything to the surface. Mulling through hours of missed chances, regrets, and all the horrors (that he'd pushed and pushed until they started to push back, overpowering his feeble attempts to forget them) that filtered out of his conscious and into the deepest crevices of his mind, was better than the alternative.

Falling asleep and having his dreams haunt him each night.

They centered on Rin dying again, and again, and again and again.

He was forced to watch the blood drain from her body, watch her crumple to the ground, watch the light fade from her eyes until she was nothing but deadweight in his arms. He watched Kakashi kill Rin over and over and over; his hand piercing through her chest, his words –

(_Protect Rin –_

I will.)

- replaying loudly in his head, like a broken record, skipping over and over.

Or: he was the one echoing Kakashi's movements. His hand pushing through Rin's chest, her blood raining on his forearm, his eyes watching her plead with him, asking him silently _whywhywhy, Kakashi? whywhywhy? _and not being able to do anything about it.

The patterns interchange between the two, never faltering or changing. It's not an easy routine, but it's constant and leaves no room for surprise or anything new, and he can manage the sleeplessness and the horrors at night with a sleeping pill.

(Sometimes two. Sometimes with alcohol.

Usually three with two bottles of sake.)

Waking up with a hang-over, dazed and disoriented from the pills that have yet to wear off, is easier than walking by the door (the crack in the middle grinning lopsided at him) at the end of the hall. It's easy to pretend his steps don't hesitate and that there's a second pause where his hand twists out to grasp the brass doorknob, or when his body turns by default, poised to enter.

He still hasn't spoken to Rin.

Their semblance of a relationship crashed and burned with his hand print across her wrist. Smoking embers can still be seen from the space between the door and the floor, pouring out into the hallway, infecting his lungs. He hasn't gotten close enough to be burnt, but the heat is enough to keep him at bay.

The feeling of her fingers grazing his cheek as the curved into his mask tightens the resolve to stay away more than fictitious fire. It's the heart-stopping fear he felt, the terror he'd thought washed away into a jaded numbness the moment Rin's heart stopped beating, when she began to pull that still makes him cringe. If she knew who he was – what he, the boy from her childhood, did – she would run screaming.

He doesn't want to ruin the memory of _Obito_ for her.

(He doesn't want to lose her - _again_.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

She falls apart in pieces.

The first shatters against the wet ground, drenched in the rain when she sees the name glaring at her in elegant calligraphy: _Rin_. There are no words of comfort, of passing that accurately described the woman kneeling in the muddy dirt, running wet fingers over the deep ridges of her own name.

Her shoulders shake. She doesn't say anything, and he doesn't offer any words of condolence.

(There is nothing to be said.)

He knows the feeling all too well of seeing his own name engraved in stone; a marble casing between two nameless, faceless people he never knew and will never know. When he returned to Konoha, the desperate need to see his own grave was almost consuming. He wanted to see the place where everyone – his parents, his clan, his friends – all thought that he was resting. There was no body to be retrieved, but seeing the slab of marble where everyone would walk past and think that he was residing there, was suffocating.

For hours, he stood at the end of his grave, staring blankly at the name – his name. It was almost macabre, really. He wasn't dead, but according to that simple plaque, he was. While he had the option of pretending it didn't exist, hers was real. That monument was a relic of her death. To him, it was a senseless detail; an object of mirth to scoff over.

He was alive.

But Rin, she wasn't.

It only affirmed that she was gone; that all the nightmares and paranoid thoughts were true. He knew the questions she would be asking herself (as he did, too) that couldn't be answered. Was she still buried six feet under or was that body gone now? Did she feel it when they sealed the layers of dirt on top of her? Did anyone know they were looking at an empty grave?

(Was it really empty?)

He used the sight of the tombstone to reinforce the decision to cut his ties with the village who betrayed him. What would she see it as?

The second piece breaks more frantically than the first. Her fingers slip into the mud, carving a hole near her knees.

She digs and digs and digs, uncaring (or unaware) that the rain was only filling all her progress up with murky water. He can hear her sobs when she realizes that nothing it working – that she's barely denting the surface.

He wants to pull her away from what she doing. What lies inside the grave was unknown to him.

If it was empty, that would be crushing.

(But if it was full, that would devastate her.)

Her sobs cut through the white noise of the rain, broken and sorrowful. Muddy hands push into her hair, smearing her wet skin an ashy black. No one was around to see her falling apart.

Nobody but him.

He swallows thickly and kneels beside her.

Pieces of the girl he knew from his childhood lay abandoned and broken at his feet.

Obito pulls her close to his side and her head falls heavy on his shoulder. Her sobs continue, but she's not in hysterics. He tries to offer words of comfort, of reassurance, but nothing comes. They die on his tongue, leaving a slick taste in his mouth. The urge to jump away from her was deeply rooted, but he tries to ignore it. His muscles draw in tight at her close proximity, remembering the feel of her cool fingers against his heating skin, brushing under the mask brings up that terror of her finding him out again.

Her shuddering breath and half-lidded eyes keep him stuck in place, giving her the temporary reprieve she needs.

(He did this to her.)

"We should-"

Her lips smear ashes across the porcelain covering his chin. "I'm gone…"

The melancholy in her voice makes him wince. "Yes."

"I died."

He nods slowly. The lid of his mask obscures her face from his view. He doesn't know what to say. Petty words don't seem to be enough. Neither does half-truths about a chance at a second life.

Her hands cup the sliver of skin exposed where jaw meets neck, and she slowly eases her fingers against the underside of his mask. He can feel the trail of water and dirt that stains his skin with the gentle brushes of her hand. "Will you ever take it off?"

Acid floods his mouth. The thought of her seeing him – knowing that Obito was the one who brought her back, who caused this pain – makes his stomach churn. A part of him wants to. Take the mask off, stop hiding, and see where it leads, but the crushing fear of her running away or tarnishing the one good thing about him – her memory – keeps him from untying the strings and removing it.

(she might not see the resemblance. she might want him back.)

He pushes the thoughts away and shakes his head. "No."

"Why not?"

Her voice is nothing but a whisper against the pelting rain. It echoes so loudly in his head, drowning out the noise in the background. All of his excuses (you won't like what you see; it's not practical for a ninja to show his face; leave it alone, it doesn't concern you) disappear at the gentle rasp in her voice.

His heart beats erratically in his chest.

_rinnrin-rinrin-rinrin_

"We should leave." He tries to put a distance between them; separate her from ever wanting to know him personally, and pulls her up with him. She stumbles, trying to regain her balance, and he places his hand on her lower back out of reflex. Mud drips down her thighs, running over her ankles.

She leans against his side, her head pressing against his shoulder. Her chin barely reaches his collarbone. "Why won't you tell me who you are?" Through the layers he's wearing, he can still feel the warm puffs of her breath on his skin. "It can't be that bad, can it?"

He wants to.

He wants to take the mask off and let her see him.

Obito: the boy who prided camaraderie over honor and friendship over duty; the boy with his kind eyes and compassionate smile; the boy who was her teammate; the boy who loved her; the boy who was dead.

But she wouldn't see any of that. She would see Tobi: the man who manipulated as easy as he breathed; the man who killed to get ahead in the world; the man who did what he had to for survival; the man who started a war on her former friends and family; the man who stole her from death and paraded her around like a trophy; the man who wore the scars of the boy she knew, and the name, but not much else.

How could she look at him knowing what he'd become?

"It is," he responds, but she's deadweight in his arms, snoring softly against his shoulder.

(She can't know who he is.

He won't let her.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Rin's broken pieces break into even smaller splinters.

It's not like a day ago, when she found her grave, it's much worse. All the fragments, the memories, the questions, and the disjointed thoughts and emotions are suddenly coming together in a heart-wrench ensemble.

"K-Kakashi – he-he…Oh, god," she's curled in the fetal position on the floor, clutching her heart.

Her nails break the skin and beads of red form on her wrinkled shirt, staining the grey fabric with darkened red splatters. He swallows the hatred that nearly consumes him when he looks at her shattered form, struggling to make sense of everything. Kakashi did this to her. He killed her.

She loved him.

But he's not completely blameless either. If he hadn't brought her back, she never would be going through this right now. She would be tucked away in death, peacefully, blissfully, unaware of what happened. And he took that from her.

The one reprieve she had.

"I-I keep seeing it – I keep-" her voice is thick with tears, with emotions that struggle to come out, to escape her tiny body. There's not enough room inside of her for everything to stay contained. "H-he…I _loved _him, and-and-"

He's not sure when he started moving, but suddenly his hands are pulling her up, folding her into the empty contours of his form and pretending that his heart doesn't leap with unsettled joy at how easily she fits, fills him. Rin's sobs echo in his ear from where her head is nestled on his shoulder, her nose digging into the flesh of his neck.

She's so close to him; he can feel the thumping of her heart beneath the layers of his own clothes, and his own heart beats loudly, echoing her own rhythm, as though answering an unheard call.

Her body sags against his own, eagerly soaking up the comfort he offers. Fingers clutch the fabric of his cloak and she pushes hard against his chest, trying to fuse herself with him. Her tears drip onto his shoulder, the warmth nearly burning his skin where it touches.

She smells like ashes and hot pavement and rain.

Inhaling, the scent seeps into his lungs and clears out the embers still smoking in the hallow spaces between his bones. He draws her close until there is nothing in the middle but their clothes, and shares the heat she exudes.

(Sometimes it's shocking to feel something so _human_, so alive from her. Like breathing, or the warmth of her body, and he can't stop the voice in the back of his head that plants bitter seeds about her being real, being Rin, and it hurts too much when he thinks about it, because _Rin _is dead and this is just a shadow. Seeing it differently will only cause more problems, more heartache.)

He pushes everything to the corners of his mind, blocking out their sound, and focuses solely on her. The words she's choking out sound less and less coherent until they become white noise in the background, indecipherable agony that seems too personal and makes him feel like he's intruding when he catches the odd word that sounds too familiar, too lucid.

Rin's body quakes against his own and he just holds her close, cursing the ground that Kakashi walks on for doing this to her.

To them.

(And he curses himself for making her relive the pain because he's too selfish for anything else.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

It's when her body fails for the third time in two weeks that a tightening surge of worry begins to fester inside his chest.

Three bodies in two week. Sixteen in total.

The numbers pile up and start to glare at him. Smudges of ink stain his fingers when he re-reads the notes he'd made late at night when sleep decides he's not worth. He's not sure what to do anymore. At first, it seemed simple. Every couple of months, he would need to get a new body. It was simple, easy. He could do it.

But then she had to go and wither away in only days. The cracks in her skin come back, the grey tint colors her pigment, and the yellow flecks dot her irises.

What was going to happen in another two weeks? Another month? Would her body continue to fail sooner, now? Would he have time to do the exchange before she died – again? The obvious choice was to consult Kabuto. Drag him back from whatever mission he was one and force him to fix it, fix her.

(Or he could just let her go –

No. He won't.

He _can't_.)

The thoughts begin to bleed together until there's nothing but muted voices in his head, screaming out nonsensical words that he's supposed to understand. He had the idea before, toyed with it for a while before completely dismissing it. Letting Rin go –

It doesn't make sense.

He'd brought her back for a reason. The faulty logic that soon became his biggest folly was sound at the time; between sleep deprivation and guilt, coupled with regret and stress, anything that might have had even the slightest chance at working, he would have jumped on.

Obito would have done anything to get away from the burning in his heart, the flames in his head, the smoke in his lungs, and the ashes in his bones.

And it didn't work.

His bones are still charred, cracking and breaking in her presence; the fire in his mind only grows and flickers when she's around; the smoke seeps out of the delicate lining in his lungs and crawls up his throat; and his heart is still burning as though someone was dripping acid over the beating organ periodically.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Brining her back was going to end all of that, and prepare him for the final end when he would meet them all in the reality carved from the hatred and destruction of the world they lived in. She was only supposed to be a reprieve from everything. A temporary redemption until he acquired the real thing.

It was all a mess now.

He couldn't get rid of her, but she was slowly deteriorating.

There had to be something he could do.

To what –

Save her? End her?

Obito wasn't sure anymore.

He's not sure when she stopped being a borrowed body – a decoy – to the real thing.

To Rin.

Somewhere when he was trying to distance himself from her, she managed to crawl past all of his carefully placed defenses and insert herself inside his life, his heart. She was unmovable. Situated comfortably, obliviously, she has no idea how strong of a hold she has on him. And maybe that's a good thing. If she were to know even a fraction of how much she could influence him, it would be his downfall.

And he would let it happen.

Whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it – she would have it. Immediately. Even if he had to throw a lasso over the moon and drag it down to her, he would find a way. If she wanted a star or the planets, or even the world, he would give it all to her.

And that terrifies him -

_so much_

- because he would give it all up without a fight, without a conscious thought.

This – this _Rin_, the soul trapped inside a myriad of bodies, of people he can't be bothered to care about is the _only_ thing he lives for. His heart, the burning, broken, pieces held in place only by threads of tendons, was hers.

(Always was.)

It only ever beat for her. Only ever worked because of her.

It chanted her name_ overandover _again.

_rinrin-rinrin-rinrin_

Like a broken prayer, a bitter mantra.

When did this happen? When did the ghost, the shell of the girl he used to know, become the single most important thing in his life? Even more-so than Madara? When did the shadow of his former love become the only thing he breathed for?

He'd burnt all the bridges to keep her from crossing over and tainting his heart once more like poison, only to find that while he was busy setting fires, she was busy pulling pieces of wood together and building a solid, unwavering path that led right into his heart. It's suffocating to know that – once again – Rin managed to carve her name in his traitorous organ, leaving him blindsided and unaware of what was happening.

It's too late to stop it.

Rin was nestled deep inside his marrow, seemingly ingrained to his very essence, and there was nothing he could do to end it.

(Did he even want to anymore?)

Obito might have loved the hold she still had over him. The romanticism of having her back would out-weigh the consequences of lost her once. Everything – all the troubles, the doubts, the deceits – would not have mattered to him, simply because they never would have happened.

The little boy who'd been crushed under the boulders would have never done any of the things that Tobi (the man borne from heartache and loss and lies, who swore revenge and had a deep-rooted vendetta against the village that raised him) had done.

It was easier when he was younger. Everything was chalked full of vivid colors of all pigments, not the monochrome black and white it was now.

And then there was Rin.

With Obito, her presence was simple: she was the girl of his dreams, his first – and last – love, she was the reason he breathed. It was easy with him. The unrequited love wasn't something he pondered over because he was still young. Time was a matter of opinion and not something to worry about. And he thought he had lots of it. All the time in the world to eventually show her what a great person he was, how happy he could make her.

The only rival was – real, alive, tangible – Kakashi Hakate. He knew Rin loved him, but the majority of their class (of the female population, excluding Kurenai Yuhi, but she had Asuma Sarutobi anyway) did, too. The chances of him actually noticing Rin – the little brown haired girl who sat in the second row, fourth seat beside Genma Shiranui and Iruka Umino, and was considered an encyclopedia on everything medical related – were slim.

But he must have done something to initiate a horrible chain-reaction of karma that followed him all the way through his life, when they were all put on the same team. Of course, their sensei had to be one of the best-looking jounin as well, and there had started another rival, albeit rather small.

Obito only had to deal with tangible opponents.

(And one was married, so that didn't count.)

But Obito dies and Rin does, too.

(So maybe, in some macabre way, they're perfect for each other after all.)

All of the silly hopes and dreams he'd been dancing with since he could remember, seem petty and irrelevant. Beating Kakashi, making Minato proud, becoming Hokage, winning Rin over – it all seems like a farce. Even mulling over them now, thinking about what would've happened if he never died – he uses the term loosely, metaphorically – sounds bland and disinteresting.

Obito died. Tobi lived.

Rin died. Rin was reanimated.

It's impossible to entertain the idea of them – of Rin, and of _Tobi_ – ever being together. The manifestation of Obito's demise, the person who rose from the ashes of his childhood he'd shrugged from his shoulders, is unattainable. He knew this from the beginning. The man he became wasn't suitable for someone of Rin's caliber. She was too sweet, too genuine.

Tobi was destruction, manipulation, deception, sacrilege, murder, and hatred. He was too callous, too cold, to give her what she needed. He was hardened from the things of his past and the deals of his present, and the goals of his future.

He knows this. He accepts this.

But the cold logic doesn't stop the burning in his chest.

(And it doesn't keep the silly thoughts of _what if_ and _could've been_ at bay from sneaking up on him when he's unprepared.)

He's a coward. And Rin isn't getting any better. Keeping her alive was selfish, but so was killing her off when she'd just had the chance at another life.

It a circle full of redundancy and half-truths, and he can't escape it.

(He could, if he showed her who he was. But that would cross the proverbial line between _Obito _and _Tobi_, making them one in the same, and he's not ready to profess all his sins committed under the guise of a faceless man, a practiced sycophant who can turn men into pawns, and nations into dust. He's not ready to relinquish the hold he has over the numbed guilt of all the acts of blasphemy and the atrocities he'd let befall on people.)

_it's the guilt that nearly consumes him, but in a way that's almost feathered against his skin, unlike the raw, heavy burn left behind by Rin, and that's worse than feeling nothing at all, really. _

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

She's fine.

_for now._

The scare of not being able to save her and not being able to let her go, coupled with a sever lack of sleep are starting to play tricks on his mind. Sometimes, he thinks she's brushing against his arm on purpose, or nudging his foot with her own with less than innocuous intentions.

Sometimes, he thinks she might care about him.

Especially when she looks at the worn look in his eye and softly shakes her head, telling him that he needs water, lots of rest, and maybe a bowl of soup. It's easy to pretend that the look in her eyes is a strange adoration and the blush on her cheeks is there because he's in the room, or in close proximity to her.

But it's all a farce. She's not worried about his health; without him, she'll die. While he knows Rin isn't that callous, Tobi is used to the idea of faux-concern and antipathy that people give. The cruel intentions and biding time is the safer option than admitting that, maybe, she might have grown _fond _of him.

(Oh-so discreetly, he brings her a book on the effects of Stockholm syndrome, and says he saw it as a bit of light reading.)

It's better to brush her off, to push the displays of affection to the back of his mind, and play it off as loneliness. She's alone in a desolate place, surrounded only by mindless black and white drones and _him_. The Zetsus' are too incompetent for her to develop any feelings for, but he's a tangible person who can reciprocate; he has a mind of his own and isn't lead blindly by someone else.

He tells himself this to avoid the flutter in his heart and the clamminess of his palms when she smiles at him (more often than usual, now, ever since she'd snuck away to her grave and he'd comforted her). It's not practical, and it's not right.

Rin _can't _have feelings for _him_.

(Because then she would be falling for _Tobi_, who is not _Obito_ – not in her eyes – and that's wholly unfair. _Obito's _been pining after her for years, but she loved Kakashi. And even now, when she's pretty much falling for _him_, she doesn't know it and thinks he's _Tobi_.)

Maybe he's a little bitter, but he's _always _loved her. When will he get the chance to have her return those feelings? Hiding behind a mask with a different name?

(He kind of hates himself – _Tobi_, that is – and it doesn't make sense, but he can't help the twinge of envy he feels when Rin wraps her hand around _Tobi's _arm and smiles at _Tobi_, and says _Tobi's _name oh-so sweetly, and looking at _Tobi _adoringly with a little blush dusting across her cheeks.)

_kakashi, kakashi, kakashi, tobi, tobi, tobi –_

when will _Obito _ever get the chance?

(It's when he finds the book in the garbage, and her lips ghosting over the side of his mask, brushing the porcelain and whispering _Tobi_ quietly, that he finally decides that he kind of hates that name.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

"Why am I here?" She whispers quietly, almost to herself, and blushes shyly over the top of her tea cup when she catches his gaze. "I-I mean, I understand that you brought me here – um, brought me back – but I'm trying to understand _why_. I keep drawing blanks because you never answer any of my questions and you don't _tell _me anything. I think I…deserve an answer, b-because, there _has _to be a reason you went to such great lengths to have me here, but I don't know you. And as far as I know, you don't know me either."

It takes a second for her words to fully ingrain themselves inside his head. Through the haze of her speech, he can see the doubt, the insecurity, the fear shining in her eyes, almost reflecting his own confliction. It's shocking, too, hearing what she has to say. With a sudden clarity, he realizes that to her, he's a stranger who brought her back for seemingly no reason at all. They don't know each other in her eyes. Their history is limited to stone walls, one room, and the odd conversation late at night.

Their relationship was limited to confusion, fear, hostility, and hesitancy. In the beginning, she was his hostage. He was the masked man who stole her abruptly from her home and took her to some foreign land, and claimed that they were in the middle of a war. Through the cracked memories and confusion she was feeling, his actions make little sense to her. From there is progressed to terror and hatred as her body began to fail and break at off interventions; she found out she was a walking corpse, that she was once dead and that he took her away from the clutches of death.

And then there was the night she found her grave. The clarity in her eyes, the confirmation of what she had theories on but no concrete evidence was drastic change in their affiliation. She had to come to terms with the fact that the man she loved killed her, once again, with little reason. Obito went from being the man who was her captor, to the man who gave her life. It would have been a lot to process, a lot to take in.

All with seemingly no reason at all.

(When she asked who he was and what he wanted, it suddenly doesn't seem like an accusation anymore.)

Obito forgot for a moment – too caught up in his own mixed emotions, the cloud of sleep deprivation hanging over him, his plans and schemes, and the way – that she didn't have a fraction of the information that he had. While she was aware that many years passed, she wasn't privy on anything else. Just the little pieces he gave her.

Breadcrumbs, really.

He swallows down the momentary guilt he feels and the ache in his chest at her lost expression. Whilst she was grasping at tendrils of smoke, trying to figure out the happenstance of her death and life, he was sitting back with all the answers, teasing her with his knowledge and her ignorance. All of the secrets and clues she needed were at arms-length, hidden behind his porcelain mask, taunting her. It was just in reach too, but no matter how hard she tries, she couldn't quite grasp it.

"Maybe you're not asking the right questions," he says, feigning the detachment he has gotten good at over the years.

Rin's wounded look nearly breaks his resolve, but he looks away. He can't give her answers – not yet, at least – and it's both frustrating and comforting. With it, he has something to hide behind; a means to escape her undoubted heartbreak when she finds out that the boy of her youth has wracked so much terror and devastation over the years.

(He covers himself with his own cowardice, using it like a shield to block out those _what if _scenarios that mock him relentlessly when he allows his thoughts to wander, and sticks to the image of Rin's face twisted in hatred at him and words that drip acid like a crucifix.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

"Okay," Rin nods slowly and the determined glint in her eyes makes him weary.

He closes the book with a snap and turns to her, perched on the edge of her bed, staring vacantly at design in the quilt. "What?"

"You're name is Tobi: true or false?"

Obito swallows down the trepidation that grips his throat in vice. "Rin-"

"True or false," she repeats, narrowing her gaze.

His own words come back to haunt him as she found a way to get around the monosyllabic-only questions. This isn't the setting he'd wanted when he pictured telling her everything, but he knows that those thoughts he entertained were full of fallacy. He was never going to answer her questions on his own; he would never sit her down and lay everything out in the open without some push.

Maybe she knows him better than he thought.

"False." The word nearly chokes him.

Rin nods as though she expected as much. "You're from the fire country, true or false?"

His grip on the book tightens until his bones groan with the strain. There's a throbbing in his jaw from where his teeth are clenched together. Everything in his body feels tense, constricting. A part of him wants to lash out and walk away from the terror that surrounds him, lures him in like a safety-net, offering a reprieve from the fear trembling in his blood, but he remembers the bruises on her wrist from his anger and feels guilt nip at his heart, pinching his stomach.

He doesn't want to hurt her.

The thought of it makes his stomach twist and clench painfully.

Instead, Obito closes his eyes and breathes in deeply.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Lungs settle with the rhythmic movements and the rest of his body follows. His muscles unfurl, his jaw slacks, his bones sigh, and his heart calms into a steady, methodical beat that seems to reverberate off his bones.

When he opens his eyes and gets lost in the nebula of her eyes, he finds a sense of comfort and peace that pulls and pulls at the taut threads his mind until it all falls apart at the seams. He can do this.

(but he sees her hateful face and almost falters.)

No, he can answer her questions now. There's no reason to hide anymore. The war is nearing its last stages, and in months, weeks, _days_, he might not make it back to her. He can give her this final thing, this piece of closure and see where she wants to go.

It makes him scoff ruefully when he realizes throughout this whole endeavor that he never once asked for her opinion. He never even thought of going to her and seeing which direction she wanted to go in. From the beginning he planned everything that – ironically – concerned _her_.

This finality, this decision, doesn't make the strain in his shoulders or the apprehension crawling up his throat, or the fear that wraps around his heart, any easier to hold.

"True," he breathes, and the weight that lifts from his body nearly makes him drop.

He can do this.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

"…The reason you wear a mask is from an injury to the right side of your body. True or false?"

"How did you know that?"

"Besides the fact that the only eye hole in your mask is on the left side? You favor your right more when you walk."

"I see. How observant."

"Stop stalling. True or false?"

"True."

"You're from Konoha. True or false?"

"…True."

"You – you know me. True or false?"

"True."

"And I know you. True or false?"

"…Rin-"

"True or false?"

"…True."

"When I asked if you knew Kakashi Hakate, you were lying. True or false?"

"Rin-"

"Stop stalling."

"T-true."

Her voice shakes. "You're going to take your mask off and show me after this. True or false?"

"W-what?"

"Answer the question."

"I can't-"

"True or false: you're going to take the mask off and show me?"

All the air from his lungs is forced out at her statement. His throat spasms and he can't get any oxygen inside. The thumping of his heart echoes through the room, so loud he's sure she can hear it, too.

He can't do this.

Answering her – showing her his face – isn't something he is willing to let happen. Retreating into his self-carved shell is easier than seeing the eventual disgust, the horror, etched on her face. She'll hate him. She'll despise him. Everything he's ever done will be open and raw, and there for her to pick at, to tear down the firm-clutches he has on the insurmountable guilt and regret piled on top of each other in a forgotten place somewhere inside of him.

Somewhere he doesn't know.

(Somewhere she can't get to, can't see.)

But it's her gentle touch on his forearm and soft eyes that keep him rooted in his place, unable to move. The warmth of her skin burns him in that familiar way. It's the same pain he feels each time he wakes up realizes that she's dead and there's nothing he can do about it anymore.

That age-old burn her memory causes that torches his heart and sets everything in him on fire.

His mouth tastes like ashes.

"True or false," she repeats, fingers brushing against the black ridges in his mask.

The smoke clears from his lungs when he opens his mouth. This is it, he thinks, staring at the gentle encouragement on her face and feeling morose that he'll never see her looking at him like that again.

"T-true."

Suddenly, he wants to hide behind Tobi when only a few days ago, wanted him gone.

There must be something she can see in his eye as lets her arm fall to her side and cautiously steps back. "Are you sure?"

The words are hesitant, spoken softly, and he grasps her hand, bring it toward the clasp behind his head. Her eyes widen when his intension sink in, and her sharp inhale makes him glance at her. Bending down, he tugs her close and bows his head. The awkward angle distorts his view of her, the edges of the mask making a dark crescent moon, cutting off the upper part of her body. He tries to relax his body and focuses on the dark sash across her waist.

He can feel her fingers tremble against his scalp and slides the pads of his fingers against her bare forearm. "Go ahead."

The words must give her more confidence as she pulls on the material, gently, pushing it through the loops. One of the clasps opens, falls, and hits the nape of his neck. A moment later, her thumb trails soothingly over the spot. The second one drops on the other side.

He can feel the balk of the mask loosen, hanging only by a single attachment.

Rin stalls.

"A-are you sure?" The recycled words wash over him, lessening the internal struggle of wanting to run away from her and to rip the mask off to get it over with. "I'm sorry for pressuring you," she says, her voice thick with emotions he can't quite place.

"I'm sure, Rin."

At his words, she shakily unties the last clip, holding it in place with her hands. He can feel the tremors wracking through her and it's strange that he'd feel them in his own hands.

No.

He looks down to see his fingers trembling. Clenching his hands into fists, he sits up, pushing Rin back. Her hands struggle to keep hold of the heavy porcelain, and he reaches up, splaying a hand over the rough texture. She lets go and the weight falls into his palm. The unexpected drop nearly makes him lose his grip, but he rights himself and turns to her.

"I'm sorry," is all he can say as he lets the mask go and it falls in his lap.

Silence.

White noise takes over, ringing in his ears.

Keeping his gaze fixated on a crack in the floor is easier than looking at her.

The shock, the hatred, the disgust, the horror – they will all be waiting for him the moment he does, and he can't bear her disappointment at him.

It's the sharp gasp of disbelief that makes want to disappear.

He's waiting for the onslaught of acerbic words he heard replying in his mind like a mantra for days to come. In his mind, her voice was distorted and cruel, and he wonders what it will sound when he's awake.

Will it hurt just as much or will it hurt more?

He doesn't get the chance to find out when her cool finger slips under his chip and tilts his head toward her. The first thing he notices is a galaxy of emotions.

None of them match what he'd initially assumed she would feel.

There's shock, of course, but not the kind that makes his stomach in a ball of dread. It's disbelief as she questions what she's really seeing. Others he can't decipher, but the rest is easy and does nothing to soothe the anxiety welling inside.

Sadness.

Confusion.

…Happiness.

The feeling is so out-of-place he almost laughs.

Why would she feel _happy _after everything he's done?

"I don't – I-"

"…I'm sorry," he chokes out, his throat feeling parched, raw.

Her hands are touching him, ghosting over his face, his scars a second later. He sits in shock, too numb to do anything to stop her search.

He catches her gaze when her fingers tremble over the jagged flesh beneath his eye, and sees the slowly sinking realization welling over the tumultuous emotions.

"No," her voice falters on the word, "It's not – you can't – _O-Obito_…?"

The suddenness of hearing his name in her gentle tenor sends a shock of relief through his heart, spreading like morphine over the blistering wounds inside the capillaries. It's accompanied by the sting of alcohol, smothering the open injuries when she pulls away, unable to look at him.

Words, reasons, apologies, are all at the tip of his tongue, trying to get free; he swallows them down instead and watches her shatter once again.

(At least now the guilt he feels at her turmoil is warranted this time. The thought leaves a bitter ache in his chest, but over the thrumming pain of her rejection and disappointment, it's lost in the background.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

Obito avoids her for three days.

He wants to say he was giving her space – some time alone to process the latest development in her seemingly nonsensical life – but that would a lie. He ran like a coward, seeking solace in the bitter comfort of solidarity and blueprints dictating the war, pouring over hours of miniscule details to make sure everything went smoothly when the final curtain would fall and the last bijuu was caught.

It was easier than thinking about the look on Rin's face when he took off the mask and she recognized him. The crushing betrayal and abject terror in her eyes was suffocating and he needed to get away. From her, from the ghosts that crawled inside his head and spit the corrosive words that echoed for months in the confines of his mind, the bitter tinge of nostalgia that cut so deep he was sure if he cracked his skull open, gaping wounds and torn flesh would be visible.

Shadows dance around him in the time that he spends locked away from her; they taunt him with the premise of her scorn, her disappointment, her hatred.

He blames the phantoms on a lack of sleep.

When she found out who he was, the redemption, the elusive reprieve he'd wanted, hasn't come. In its wake were nightmares, haunting images of his former life that spears him through the chest each night. First was Rin – her disgust, her revulsion, her detestation, of him is there; she burns him alive over and over again, flippantly disregarding his pleas for her to understand.

He wakes up in a cold sweat, heart racing and body trembling.

They get worse. When he finds the odd hour to get in a moments rest, or accidentally falls asleep because his head is too heavy and his eyes are aching, he's overcome by the demons of his past, ready to sink their claws into him, aching for his destruction.

There's Kakashi. His arrogance, his power, his indifference toward him and Rin; he lets her die over and over again, uncaring about the bargains and deals Obito makes.

And then Minato comes. He doesn't do anything – he doesn't burn him or curse him – only looks on with…disappointment, and asks _why_. That one word echoes in his head. He doesn't yell, he doesn't snarl or scream, he whispers the word in such a crestfallen, heartbroken way that Obito begins to wish he would just rip his heart out, spitting the words instead of that subdued and broken tone he uses.

It's worse when he's left staring his old teacher in the face and can't come up with an answer no matter how hard he searches, no matter what excuses or reasons he tries to grasp at. The guilt, the remorse, leaves him awake, shaking and breathless, teetering on the verge of desperation and shame.

Sleep becomes a nonexistent enemy once again.

When he thinks back to the only time he had a truly restful sleep, it's when he was injured and she was there, soothing him comfortingly and mending the wounds he'd acquired from fighting. No dreams, no nightmares, no thoughts, just a shock the next morning when his head wasn't full of cotton and his eyes weren't dry and cracking because even closing his eyes became too much.

Rin.

It always ends back to her.

Like a circle: she was the reason he couldn't sleep then and she was the reason he couldn't sleep now, but she was also the only one who allowed him a moments rest in what seemed to be the first time in months, years. With her, he could sleep; without her, he couldn't.

The contradiction makes his chest contort and his stomach churns, twisting nauseatingly. It was frightening how much influence she had over him.

(Rin, he decides – and maybe it was the utter fatigue or the stress that lies so heavily in his bones – was both the fire that burned, that consumed him, and the water, the nirvana, that put him out of his misery (whilst creating it). And he was all to happy to sit and watch her dance around, fanning the flames that ate his skin and scorched his heart, all with a smile on his face.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

_We should talk._

The ambiguous words burn holes in his retinas.

("We should talk," she says, looking beautiful in the soft orange light.

His heart begins to flutter at the nervous smile she gives him, and he eagerly returns it, the wide grin making his cheeks burn with the stretch. Rin glances up at him, biting her lower lip in contemplation. There's a soft flush dusting across the bridge of her nose that makes his heart thud in his chest. His palms feel clammy and his stomach churns, fluttering with happiness at the sudden turn of his thoughts.

He thinks she might confess, and the mere prospect of that happening makes his chest _burn_ with hope because he loves her, too; he loves her so much and -

"I love Kakashi," she finishes, gazing down at the scuff marks in her shoes. "I thought I should tell you because you're my friend – my _best _friend, Obito, and I wanted to tell someone."

ilovekakashi –

oh.

_oh._

His heart cracks in two halves at her silently confession. Obito tries to forge a semblance of blasé happiness at her words, at the soft note of vulnerability coloring her words. She ducks her head low, flushing deeply at his silence.

"Oh," he says, because really, _really_, what else can he do while he watches her eyes light up brighter than the sun and a warm hue kiss her cheeks when she whispers Kakashi's name like it's the most beautiful thing she's ever heard?

"Can you keep this a secret, Obito?" She's smiling and blushing and twisting her fingers nervously in her lap, and the shy adoration clouding the auburn galaxies of her eyes makes his heart to split at the seams and bleed out over his chest, coating his bones in a grotesque crimson.

It hurts.

No.

It's burning through him like acid and he thinks for a minute that he might've accidentally set himself on fire, but through it all he smiles – it's so forced it nearly tears his skin – and nods. "Of course, Rin-chan…"

_he would do anything for her, even rip the traitorous organ still thudding painfully in his chest for her, just to see her happy. even if it's not with him._

because he loves her.

and she just sits idly back, loving someone else, watching as he burns alive.)

_We should talk_ soon becomes the second worse thing she'd ever said to him.

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

"Start from the beginning," she says. The ambivalence in her eyes drips down and embeds itself in her ivory skin, twisting her expression into a tentative curiosity.

These are the first words she spoke to him since his name, he notes with trepidation. Even when they walking the last distance to the clearing – that bares an odd resemblance to the park bench she brought him to that night when she broke his chest for the first time – she was silent, letting the cool wind and the sounds of night fill the empty void stretching between them.

It was tense, constricting. She followed him with her eyes fixated on her feet, unable to meet his stare. The refusal to acknowledge him hurt more than he thought it would. It cut deep and he had to swallow a bitter retort (years of practice, of dealing with less than savory people) that crept up his throat and danced on his tongue.

Lashing out wasn't practical. He didn't want to hurt her – intentional or otherwise – and the waspish words that struggled to break loose would.

(It only proved to show him just how much he'd changed: Obito would never think something so cruel – so tasteless – about her, or even have to fight with himself to push it away. Thing were different and cruelty was necessary in his profession; it was almost second nature to him now: fighting back, rebelling against someone's hold over him – all of those reactions are reflexive actions now, and he doesn't think about them much. Until now. Until her.)

He wants to disappear, avoid the accusation in her eyes, hidden behind the thinly veiled uncertainty and the subtle fear lurking in the midst of her ocean deep emotions. They terrify him; sending a chill through him so deep it rattles his bones and shakes the seemingly impenetrable resolve he'd spent years constructing.

She breaks his gaze, flicking her eyes toward a swaying branch; he feels the tension coiling tightly inside him lessen slightly, and he nods.

"I'd thought the boulders crushed me," he clenches his fist when her eyes find his once again. "But it didn't. Someone found me and healed me."

Rin frowns, "the extent of your injuries…"

"I know," he looks at moon balancing on the top of an Everest tree.

"Then how-?"

"Someone saved me."

"Oh," her voice cracks. The sound resonates around his head. "I-I'm…sorry, Obito-"

"Don't be."

"No, but-" she pauses, and he spares her a glance. With her arms folded under her chest – as though she's trying to keep herself from falling apart – she looks impossibly small. "If I knew…I would have…"

Her words trail off in a whisper.

"What happened, um, after you woke up?" She brushes back a lock of brown hair that catches on her elongated eyelashes. "Why didn't you come home?"

"I couldn't because everyone thought I was dead. They already had a funeral, and I - I trained instead. Letting myself heal from the injuries. And then I heard that you and Kakashi needed help," he swallows the vitriolic taste in his mouth. "I went to help, but when I got there, Kakashi had…"

_Killed you._

He was too late.

(_Protect Rin –_

I will.)

_all lies. all of it._

Obito glances away from the stricken look overcoming her expression as the realization settles in.

"Oh," she echoes softly, her words coming out in a harsh exhale. "That was when I-"

The words die on her lips abruptly.

He watches a cloud drift over the moon and lets her mull over her thoughts.

"Can I see them?" She asks, breaking the quiet that hung between them. He glances at her, and she edges closer with an inquisitive expression. "Your injuries, I mean – or the scars. It's – medically speaking – a miracle that you survived, and-"

His heart stutters in his chest. She wanted to see him – the scars, proof of his story; she wanted confirmation that he wasn't a fraud, a conman looking to cheat her out of something – maybe her life, or her sanity. He can't begrudge her that; he was still adjusting to the reality that she wasn't borrowed skin and patchwork emotions, that she was a genuine replica (but still a copy; never the real thing, the real Rin) of the girl he'd lost and not some desperate soul masquerading with foreign memories and a body made from paper and ink.

She stops at a respectable distance, understanding working over the unmasked curiosity. "If it's too personal…"

"No," he cut through, swallowing the sudden urge to wrap his hands over her shoulders and tug her closer. His bones feel heavy when he reaches up and pulls on the claps holding the thick porcelain in place.

He'll never fully get used to the idea of being so completely bare for someone else to see. For such a long time, he hid behind the guise of being whatever necessary in order to gather pawns or work a situation in his favor. Throughout it all, the mask was always present. It was a large piece of him – keeping all the vulnerability at bay. The sudden exposure, the sense of being naked without something covering the mess of scars on the right side of his face, was not an easy thing to deal with.

It left him feeling weaker, less in control.

(He hated how much he depended on the disguise, but it was already too late to change that.)

It falls, hitting his shoulder with a dull thud that makes Rin jump slightly. The corner of his mouth tilts up at her nerves.

(Maybe she feels the same as him; without the mask in the way, she can't pretend that the little boy from her childhood is such a monster.)

He waits a second before letting it slip from his face. With it tightly in his grasp, he lets his hand fall to the side, taking the heavy porcelain with him.

The chill of night spreads across his face and he misses the warmth immediately.

"Oh," she whispers. It takes him a second to remember that she wasn't able to fully see the extent of his injuries when he'd first shown her his face. "It's…really _you_."

Her hand flies up to cover her mouth, and she takes a sudden step forward.

"O-Obito…"

Hearing his name again – spoken with such familiarity, such comfort – makes his heart clench painfully. Cautiously, she moves closer to him. If he extended his arm, it would brush against her shoulder. The thought of it – of touching her, of being so close – makes palms feel clammy.

He can feel the heat from her body.

His hands tremble.

Her eyes search his face, taking in the array of scars and the subtle changes he went through since the last time she saw him. It's from her closeness that he notices she's shaking too.

"I thought you were dead," she begins. Tears drip down the sides of her face, wetting the red markings on her cheeks. "If I knew, I would have saved you; I would have helped you, but-"

"No," he says, shaking his head. "There was nothing you could've done. The cave was crumbling down on top of itself; you would have gotten caught in it as well."

She nods solemnly in acquiescence. "I guess."

There's something – bitterness, maybe nostalgia – behind her neutral expression as she ponders over his words. The dim lighting casts shadows on her face, hollowing out the spaces below her eyes and under her chin; she looks ethereal with the moon hanging like a halo over her head. It's a drastic change from the girl with the kind smiles and the gentle eyes; she's hauntingly beautiful, grown in ways he'd never been able to fathom before.

This is the girl who sets him on fire. She was the one who wrapped her fingers around his chest and tugged his heart out, engraving her name in the soft tissue of his ventricles; uncaring about the pain she causes when she painstakingly pulls each of his bones that protect his chest a part, unceremoniously tossing them over her shoulder.

Looking at her becomes too painful and he glances at the small opening leading out of the enclosure.

"You know," the suddenness of her voice cuts through the settled silence and he looks over his shoulder at her questioningly. A small smile cracks through the despair; red dusts across the bridge of her nose. "You look so different, now. It's strange."

"How so?"

"W-well," her flush deepens, and she fidgets under his scrutiny. "One minute you were shorter than me, and the next, you're taller."

(A part of him expected her to mention the contrasting ideologies he's carries now; the ease in which he uses manipulation or death as a means to get what he wants. He's grateful when she doesn't.)

Slowly, the humor in her eyes fades into something he can't quite place. It's oddly similar to the one she used to give him – _Tobi_ – before she knew his identity and the thought of it makes his chest ache. Was she thinking about him? Disappointed that the man she thought he was turned out to be a farce – a ghost from her past?

(He shouldn't be thinking these things – he knows that – but the cold logic isn't enough to stop his heart from picking up the pieces of hope still scattered around and gripping it tightly.)

"I grew up."

The words ring true for both of them. While she never had the chance to fully grow into anything beyond the young girl who died, he diverged off the path he was determined to follow, ending in debauchery and criminality. Sometimes he wonders what would have happened if the rocks never crushed him, if they had gotten Rin in time. Would anything be different or was he destined to meet Madara Uchiha at some point in his life?

What about Rin. Would he have been enough to save her? Without the strength acquired by the intense training the founding father of his clan put him through, would he be half as strong, half as ruthless as he was now?

(And Minato. Would he be alive? Would he be proud of the man Obito became?)

He hated these thoughts that corrupt his carefully constructed regime; the dictatorship of his mind that was seemingly untouchable, unalterable, and leaks into the empty spaces of his head. His mind has never been his – it's always been free for the taking; the only part of him that was so easily influenced on half-truths when everything else dealt only in absolutes.

It was infuriating how flexible his head, his thoughts, would turn when the subject of his youth (or of Rin, of Kakashi, of Minato) was dragged to the surface. Like insects, the polluted ideas and fantasies loiter around, ignoring the tyranny he imposes on himself, the control that the tries to wrestle back.

It's useless.

He wins the crown but loses the kingdom.

(And he thinks of Rin in those moments when everything begins to rebel against him. His head, his heart – they were never his; the label saying they were, the faulty reasoning and expressions of ownership are forgeries with her name inked across the pages in fire and his in gasoline.)

"You have," it's the gentle weight of her hand touching his forearm that makes his head swim.

She's so close and if he moves just an inch, just a little inch, they would be pressed tightly against each other. The thought sends an ocean of fear through him. Beating faster, fasterfaster_faster_, his heart felt like a ship on the rocky waters. Stranded at sea without an anchor and holes in its sails, it floats aimlessly, crashing against the waves that push at it from all sides.

He's drifting with no control over himself.

All he can see is the dark depths of her eyes – brown and gold and yellow and with flecks of auburn dotting around her pupils – and the scent of ashes and burnt wood that nearly suffocates him. Pushing herself inside the small diameter of space that lingered in the middle between them, he can feel her heart thudding through their clothes (or was it his?) and the heat her body exudes consumes him; it's so much, too much, and he can't breathe, he can't –

Fingers curl against the nape of his neck, dull nails scraping lightly over his skin. His heart feels like it might burst with the rapid palpitations that her close proximity causes. Unsure, he tangles his fists in the pockets of his cloak, and he shyly glances at him from beneath thick_thick_ black lashes and her endless brown eyes look so deep, and –

Her lips ghost over his.

The disjointed rhythm his heart was beating against breaks in the middle, stopping dead when the warmth of her body – pressed ohso close to his, and the slight dryness of her mouth slanting over his – seeps through the layers of their clothes and clings to his skin.

She's kissing him.

All the air is sucked from his lungs, leaving him shuddering against her lithe frame, trying to hold on to something, anything, to keep him grounded. It feels like the floor opened up beneath his feet and he's falling _downdowndown. _

He'd wondered what this would feel like, having her so close to him, wrapped so intimately in his embrace, but –

He can't.

This isn't supposed to happen.

Breaking away from the taste of her saccharine lips is the hardest thing he'd ever done. He mourns the loss of her instantly. "Rin," it comes out as a gasp, shaky and unsure.

"Obito," she murmurs his name, her breath tickling his chin. Her hands slide down his neck, resting gently on his shoulders. "What's wrong?"

This, he wants to say, but the words get lodged in his throat at the vulnerability in her eyes, the uncertainty. Nothing comes out and she takes the time to pull his long forgotten mask his hand, turning it over in hers. He'd been so enraptured with her presence, that he let it disappear into the background. It's almost shocking to see it.

"Is it this?" She asks, her voice a mere rasp drowned out by the fluttering leaves on the trees that sway with the wind.

He wants to shake his head, to tell her that it has nothing to do with anything, but all coherent thought runs from his mind when she drops his mask on the ground and knots her fingers in the thick fabric of his cloak, pulling him closer. "I don't care about that. You shouldn't either. Its meaning, Obito, and-"

Kissing her was like nothing he'd ever felt before. The weight of his lips moving against hers, dragging out shuddering gasps and little huffs of air from her lungs, was addicting. She seeped into his veins, tainting his blood like poison, like morphine. Polluting his head and his lungs and his head; she effortlessly took over the captaincy of his being.

And he let her.

(when he was younger, he would lie in bed and think about her – about this, about kissing her – and it would keep him awake for hours, wondering what it would feel like. he thought the softness of rose peddles, the taste of honeysuckle, and the smell of ginger. he thought of her youthful face and ivory skin and muted curves. she was none of those: rin was like running bare fingers over the face of a feather; the gentle drag and pull, the smooth ridges and the dry softness. she was wet wood and smoke, and hard slopes where she'd outgrew the childish physique for a more womanly figure.)

He's intimately aware of each inhale and exhale of breath that leaves and enters her lungs; the flutter of her lashes against his cheeks, her nose pressing on the side of his, the slightly chapped bottom lip from when she would bite into the flesh, and the tension in her shoulders.

Lungs screaming, heart racing, he pulls away from her lips – fighting the urge to drop down press his to hers once again – and takes a step back, breathing in deeply. She looks beautiful standing there with her lips slightly parted and her cheeks a deep red, and her eyes unfocused.

He did that.

It makes his head spin. Everything rushes around him, too fast and too slow; it's hazy and he takes a second to gather his thoughts, try to find the semblance of control.

(he had it before her, when she was still gone and he didn't know the feeling of her mouth over his, sharing the same air, or the taste of her lingering on his tongue.)

Rin looks at him with a million questions in her eyes, breathing deeply. "Obito…?"

"I was going to give you a choice," he says, voice hoarse. "An ultimatum."

Her hand is scorching when it presses against the side of his face, covering the scars. "And what are my choices?"

There's still a little bit of her taste in his mouth. "You can leave; there's a village three miles away from here, unless you wanted to go somewhere else. You won't be able to go back to Konoha, but you should be able to find someplace that's acceptable."

"Okay," she breathes, nodding. "And the second…?"

_You could stay. _

Only –

That wasn't an option. It didn't fit anywhere into his heavily detailed itinerary. She had no place in his world and he was going to keep it that way. Her delicacy was too important for him to let her tarnish it by divulging into a world she has no reason to be in – where monsters are real and men are cowards, and girls like her get picked apart pieces by pieces until there's nothing left but a cold memory, a smear on the wall.

Desperate for a distraction, he continues. "I can tell you how to-"

_Die. _Again.

It tastes like ashes. He thinks about graves and wilted flowers and the stench of overturned dirt; of people stepping on the soft ground, not noticing the crunch of bones under their feet or the silent pleas for help – for _something_, for escape – that go unheard to the living above.

(He blames the sudden chill on the dropping temperature.)

"Tell me how to what?"

"Let go." He lies. And it makes him think about blowing away dust or brushing charcoal from the tips of his fingers.

Rin moves into him, pressing her body in the contours of his. It still makes his heart stutter at how easily she fits into him. Her arms wrap around hid midsection and he tries to ignore the tightening sense of apprehension her proximity has.

"I want to stay with you."

He can feel the weight of her words in his bones. "You don't know what you're asking."

"I do, Obito. Just let me in," she whispers against his collarbone. "We'll be together."

"We can't."

"If – if things were different," her arms tighten around him. "Would it work out?"

_No_ –

(if things were different, she would be dead and so would he.)

- it wouldn't.

But maybe there was a reason why they were breathing; that they both got a second chance. He doesn't believe in half-truths; they were messy and uncertain, and only caused problems.

He deals in absolutes.

Manageable. Probable. Easy.

Nothing about this was easy.

_Nothing about Rin was easy_.

(And maybe, maybe that was the point.)

"Maybe," he consents. The word is beginning to lose its meaning to him.

Her shuddering exhale – icy cold and then hothothot – ghosting over his skin makes his spine tremble. "So that's it?"

"Yes."

"I wish things were different," she says.

"Me too," he answers. "But that's not a variable choice."

"So make it one."

"It's not that simple."

"Maybe it can be if you try."

He doesn't respond, only holds her a little tighter, unable to let go. She broke his chest so many times; corrupted his thoughts, his mind, his heart, and he still isn't strong enough to let her go, to push her away. He could never do that – she was embedded in the marrow of his bones; she tainted his blood like poison and wrapped her fingers around his heart, tugging on the tendons whenever she pleased.

"I'm staying," her words taste infinite. He can't find it in himself to argue. "You can't make me leave."

He doesn't think he can.

(Sometimes, he isn't sure if she was the one lighting the match or pouring the gasoline.)

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**epilogue**

He still chases her in his dreams.

Unattainable as always, she evades him each night, running for the rosemary hill in the distance that turns into a castle of fractured bones and broken hearts, stretching out into the sky. He almost catches her, but at the last second his fingers close around nothing. Her ghost is already gone, spinning stars in her hands and dancing on the moon.

Chains wrap around his ankles, pulling him down to the bottom where the absence of light makes him want to scream and the sand chafes his skin; the anchor sits on his chest, immovable and solid, and no matter how many times he pushes it, it gets heavier until he's breathless and gasping for air that doesn't exist where he is.

He's forced to watch her invade nebulas and conquer galaxies from the bottom of the ocean.

Sometimes it's different.

Kakashi's eyes and skin and hands and madness become his. He's looking at the world through the point of a needle; contorted and foreign. Rin's there, smiling at him (but not really) and she turns to say something, but his hand moves without permission and then –

her eyes, so accusing, cut to his own. she begs and pleads and asks _whywhywhy_, but his mouth isn't his own and doesn't open. he's killing her, shouting out for something – forgiveness, redemption, help – for someone – kakashi and minato and ,adara – but nobody comes and he's sinking in a sea of her blood.

And he still thinks about Minato.

The guilt threatens to eat him whole. It burns his skin and taints his blood; the most potent poison without an antidote. He asks him why – and even now – he has no answer, no justifiable reason for his actions. It would hurt less if Minato yelled and screamed and fought him, but he just looks at him with disappointment.

(it's worse than any torture, the look of soft understanding and disapproval that sears into his eyelids hours after he wakes up.)

Rin is there.

Her presence helps him through the worst of it. She sits on the edge of his bed, running her fingers through his matted hair and whispering soothing phrases in his ear. No matter how loudly he screams, no matter how shaken he looks, she never asks questions; only looks on with a neutral expression and coaxes him into contentment with empty words and loud actions.

They travel together. Explore the world, hidden in the smallest corners of the globe.

(Rin loves the freedom, the experience.

Obito's just waiting for the clock above their heads to run out.)

It's not perfect – he still feels the burn of her death and isn't certain he could ever forget that she was a stolen body, foreign skin and different blood – and he doesn't think it will ever be. She looks at him and thinks about Kakashi, about the life she used to live and the things she lost.

He dreams and remembers a different Rin.

Ghosts still haunt them at night when everything gets too heavy.

But none of that matters because –

_dreams are meaningless anyway and ghosts are just people who can't let things go. _

**.**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**note3:** (i kind of hate how this turned out). so you've reached the end, though. i thought i had full control over this – and i did, but then it ran away from me. at chapter fifteen, everything was fine. chapter twenty: it started to slip. chapter twenty-five: it started to run. by chapter thirty-two: it grew wings and flew away.  
**note4: **the next drabble (why do i still call them that when this obvious surpassed the _one thousand word limit_?) will probably include the events that happen in this, but in Rin's point of view. don't expect it soon; my eyes are still burning from so many words.


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